hi, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. donald trump making it abundantly clear how he sees the 200,000 moms, dads, sons, daughters and grandparents who have died of the coronavirus on his watch, a death toll the experts say we might never have had to contemplate if precautions had been enacted in this country early on. if instead of doubting the effectiveness of masks, the president had encouraged people to wear masks. instead of tweeting liberate

states under stay-at-home orders he'd praise those local leaders. if instead of trying to vie for air time with dr. fauci, he'd defer to him. if he'd simply leveled with the country. one of the leading coronavirus models out of the university of washington puts the united states on track to surpass 378,000 dead by the end of this year. but none of that seems to matter to donald trump for whom the 200,000 lost souls are apparently nobodies. >> we now know the disease. we didn't know it. now we know it. it affects elderly people. elderly people with heart problems and other problems. if they have other problems. that's what it really affects. that's it. you know, in some states, thousands of people -- nobody young. below the age of 18, like nobody. they have a strong immune

system. who knows. you take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system, but it affects virtually nobody. it's an amazing thing. >> we've made it a point on this program to highlight each and every day the stories of americans taken from us too soon by the coronavirus. we've honored teachers, nurses, doctors, moms, dads, grandparents and, yes, sadly children of all ages. not one of them was a nobody. yesterday we honored a 28-year-old ob-gyn resident who was born in syracuse, new york. adline fagan. her sister broke out about losing their big sister with their local tv station. >> she touched so many lives here and it's a testament to her heart and soul. >> we're not out of the woods with this virus yet, and there are so many more people we are going to lose to this. and all those families out there that are about to lose their adline, it just makes my heart.

>> so donald trump isn't thinking about adline, her family or any of the other souls last when he celebrates his response to the virus. or brags that we've, quote, rounded the turn. his focus is where it always is. it's on himself and his desperate political attempt to hold onto power. despite the human toll of his own failures. and that's according to the devastating account from a one-time senior policy adviser to the trump coronavirus task force. she is speaking out in an exclusive new interview with andrea mitchell. listen to olivia troye. >> he was really focused on public image. messaging and it was really more about, you know, his personal agenda than really the agenda that the task force had at hand, which is how are we going to save and protect americans. >> we had a task force meeting and discussion where we had these -- this conversation, that

this was going to be big. >> that early, january 28th? >> late january, we knew. >> yet the president was saying a week later, it's going to disappear? >> it was frightening. you know, when you are the president, words matter. >> words matter. for a president who likes to pass himself off as somehow pro-life, i think he said he's the most pro-life president ever, it's been decidedly ambivalent about 200,000 deaths. that's more than triple the 60,000 deaths total that his white house predicted just a few months ago. and the hits keep coming. the infection rate is beginning to tick up once again as we send our kids back to school and as flu season closes in. a moment when listening to the science could save lives, like it could have back in march when cases first began to spike. yet, here's the crowd of trump supporters last night booing ohio's lieutenant governor all because he suggested that they wear a mask. a moment brought to our

attention by our friends at the recount. >> but if you go into a grocery store where you have to wear one, right -- hang on. hang on. just listen up. all right. i get it. but if somebody tells you to take it off, you can at least say that you're trying to save the country by wearing one of president donald trump's masks, all right? all right. >> not even a donald trump mask. that's the scene at a rally for the president who just one week ago in a town hall questioned whether masks are really such a good idea after all. the president, the american lives he puts in jeopardy every day, is where we start today. ron klain is here, former white house ebola response coordinator, now an adviser to the biden campaign, plus practicing physician and former obama white house health policy director, dr. kavita patel and

nbc and msnbc national affairs analyst for the recount, john heilemann is back. dr. patel, i have to start with you. when you make the list of all the times and all the big things he's rode in the opposition direction of science for and around, there is no story for him to tell about doing a single thing to protect this country. what is sort of the private conversation among scientists about what's ahead for us in the fall and winter? >> i think you're touching on something that's an active source of conversations as you mentioned in the united states. we're seeing an uptick. we've got at least 14 states that have a positivity rate of 10%. 10% of the tests that are being done are positive. so that's not the direction we want. and then if you look, as many of us are at europe and asia, we're seeing disturbing trends which

in the past predicted what we might see this winter and a 300,000 to potentially 400,000 deaths. and we think even the 200,000 number is an underestimate of the actual deaths just because of delays and the ways we count deaths in the united states. so scientists around the world are just concerned and add to that this lack of clear messaging around vaccines, a lack of clear messaging around masks. i mean, i can't believe watching that footage of the lieutenant governor, he was trying to do the right thing, but you saw that he got bullied and shamed. i mean, we've really learned what donald trump thinks of a herd mentality. it's really one where he puts science in a corner and he's really trying to shame us all by putting this into a political lens. so i worry that the fall and the winter is going to be far worse. and that we have to resort to more -- just honestly, i worry we have to go back to the crude measures of closing down bars

and restaurants. as some mayors in some other jurisdictions have decided to do. >> you know, ron klain, it is startling to listen to the president at his rallies for lots of reasons. but none quite as startling and upsetting as listening to him describe 200,000 dead americans as nobody. >> yeah, it's not just the 200,000 people he's saying are nobodies. it's even crueller than that. i mean, basically the core of that message, well, it's just old people. old people don't count. of course, that's horrible. ghastly. ghastly for a supposedly pro-life president to say that. ghastly for any president to say that old people somehow don't count. and, of course, even that's wrong. young people, as we've talked about on this show before die. and a lot of working middle class people. going to their jobs every day. more cops in this country have

died from covid than from walking the beat. grocery store clerks. nurses. a thousand health care workers have died helping other people fight covid. so this disease is striking all ages, all segments, all races, all geographies, red states, blue states. all the president can think about is trying to minimize it and downplay it. we're not turning the corner. he has barely gotten behind the car and started to drive. we still have no plan six months into it. the death toll is going to start to rise again. we could lose as many lives in the next three months as we lost in the past six months. half of those could be because people don't kwawear masks. donald trump could fix that overnight. >> john heilemann, it's worse than all of this. here's donald trump telling bob woodward that is absolutely kills young people. listen. >> 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 people. >> yeah, exactly. >> it's plenty of young people. >> so he's a callous president who is lying about his callousness. i'm not sure which is worse, heilemann. >> i mean, it's inhuman, nicolle. we know that donald trump is a liar. we know he's a pathological, profound, irredeemable liar. he lies about everything. he tells lies more naturally than you and i breathe. but to see it laid out in this way so starkly is -- it still stuns nearly four years into this it still stuns. a few things about this overall topic. the first is that what's amazing, and just listening to dr. patel, listening to ron, i did an interview for the circus with laurie garrett who wrote the coming plague in 1994. has been on the network a few

times. >> she's great. >> she said this thing where she said that she had done a lot of role playing over the years after she wrote in various public health settings, a lot of scenario planning from the 1990s forward over like years and years and years. and one thing all their scenario planning never took into account was the possibility that there would be a federal response that was not actually focused on trying to contain and defeat the virus. and that this was the thing that was so stunning about what we've seen is that there is no strategy and everything else, politics, business, economics, the president's own individual electoral circumstances, all of this other stuff never has there been a moment when donald trump and his government have been focused on what should obviously be the central task at hand which is to beat this virus. and that is one thing i'd say. the second thing i'd say is to ron's point about the president saying, you know, about old people that basically he's

saying old people don't count very directly. you'll wonder why donald trump is? such trouble across the country electorally against joe biden in states. democrats never win senior citizens. it's been not since al gore in the year 2000 has there been a democrat ahead. and joe biden has erased donald trump's dominant lead from 2016 in that category. it could be the thing, the great irony is that trump has put politics ahead of public health. but in the process of talking about it, he's managed to imperil himself politically by this very specific way. there's not a world where donald trump wins the presidency other than stealing it. there's not a world where he wins it honestly if he doesn't win the vote of seniors. and right now it's not just that joe biden is doing better than democrats normally do. he's winning among senior citizens and particularly in battleground states like florida. that's going to be potentially the difference between victory and loss for donald trump. and he's done it all to himself while in the process of doing

all these terrifically horrible things to this country. >> john, i want to turn to that video that we saw that came from your outfit, the recount of the ohio lieutenant governor getting booed for trying to pass out and encourage people to wear donald trump masks. i don't have a political question because i think it speaks for itself, but if you turn the cameras around, who do they think they're booing at? like what are they booing? not getting a parent sick? not killing their neighbor's kid with chemo? what are they booing? >> someone last night, when we clipped that video and put it up at "the recount" it went rapidly viral. it ran into vast numbers. it went crazy on social media and someone commented, the quote was nice death cult you've got there, gop. and that really is -- this is the other thing.

it goes back to another -- like to one of the core -- it really does, i'm using a phrase like death cult about one of the great american political parties in our nation's history. to say that, we would have once seemed hyperbolic but it feels like the republican party has become a death cult and it's all about donald trump and one of the things that sets trump apart. like what are the things that set trump apart from every other president? the pathology of the lying, the cruelty, the not taking this -- not making the virus central when any other president of any party that we've ever experienced in our lifetimes would have made the virus front and center. but the other thing that he's done on every aspect of policy and politics, since day one, he has always sought to divide the country rather than unite the country. and he is -- he alone turned the question of masks into a culture war issue. it is now a profound culture war in america, the war between those who believe that masks will save us or will at least

help to save us and those who think they are an encroachment on our individual liberty. that latter group are in the thrall of donald trump despite all available medical evidence that masks would be the thing that would do the most to contain the virus. and it does increasingly, you join that cult. it's the cult of personality, but it is literally a death cult and that's what you saw on display in that clip. you saw the death cult roar. >> yeah. yeah, and i think that's why it went so viral. i watched it, and this is a -- this is sort of among friends. this is about putting on a go trump. i wondered, the masks said liberals suck if he'd have trouble selling it. >> a trump mask. >> or i -- i wonder, dr. patel, if you pull that string through other questions about science like safe sex or flu shots, i mean, it's potentially

calamitous if 40% of the country starts turning to president trump for medical and health advice. what do we do about that? >> we're already seeing that. by the way, he does this division and kind cavos even in his -- amongst his own health administration officials. so it's no surprise that the message he's delivering is kind of what's been delivered internally where you know, the cdc director says one thing. the next day he'll tell you it's a mistake. and that's what the public takes away. and i worry that now, you know, i try to practice. we all do. evidence-based evidence. we try to keep emotion out of it. certainly we keep politics out of it. but now trump has kind of forced -- it's why you're seeing this unprecedented kind of barrage of scientific journals and scientific people kind of coming forward and saying that, you know, they can't trust the cdc or they can't trust a process where a vaccine is aproved just for election purposes. but, yes, the consequences beyond just the coronavirus. i mean, imagine.

not -- he's joked in the past, by the way, about, oh, well old people go to the doctor a lot and take a lot of medications. he's just kind of dismissed the very basis of what we do in the american health care system. no surprises, the same president that's trying to take away the affordable care act and what little right to access he's tried to -- that president obama put in place, all those millions of people that ron referred to now will have a pre-existing condition if he gets his way and will have no access to health care. so this goes way beyond the virus. >> it really does. and ron klain, i noted yesterday, and i won't put you on the spot in wearing your biden hat, but the former vice president is incredibly disciplined in keeping it on the virus and not getting pulled into sort of the hyperventilating, you know, little brush fire of every news

cycle in a way that reminds me of his old boss, president obama, and in some ways on the discipline side of the campaign i worked on in '04. and just worth noting that people like you around him have certainly impressed on him that this is what people are struggling with. if it's because their business is closed, if it's because their kids are home, if it's because they can't go to their job because their kids are home. this is sort of the crisis that everyone is living with. i want to show you something and ask you how joe biden turns this around if he wins. this is tony fauci on "the late show" talking about how all these safety things have turned into obstacles because of how politicized they've become. >> we are in such a divisive state in society that it tends to get politicized. it's almost a one side versus the other. and the thing that i keep

saying, and i'll say very briefly now because i think it's important. is that everybody feels we need to open the economy. to get people back to work. to get people back to school. but the public health messages that we've given, and that you've heard me give back months ago when we used to have the press conferences from the white house, is that public health measures should be more of a gateway and a pathway to opening the country as opposed to the obstacle to opening the country. >> of course, that was trevor noah from "the daily show." ron klain, the whole -- you can just hear a little bit of tony fauci's capac peration that the things that keep us safe. the things that achieve donald trump's goal of throwing the light switches on and going back to some semblance of normal are the very measures that he campaigns against -- wearing masks, staying aparkts doing things outdoors. how would biden turn that around

if he had the opportunity, the mentality. >> first, the reason joe biden is so focused on this is not because of his advisers. it's because he goes around the country and talks to people. unlike donald trump, he has a human reaction to that. he talks to people every day who didn't get to say good-bye to a grandparent before they died alone in a nursing home or hospital. people who have lost fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters. that's who he is. there's no way joe biden will conduct this campaign with anything other than that being front and center. as to how you start to pull this country back together, it's ironic. you show dr. fauci. joe biden has said on election night, whenever he's named the next president of the united states, the first phone call is not to a politician, not some important elected official. it's to tony fauci and to ask him to serve as his chief medical adviser on covid. tony fauci who served ronald reagan and barack obama. bill clinton and george bush, who presidents, democrats and

republicans, until donald trump, has trusted. i think bringing in that kind of bipartisan expertee, pulling people together, that's step one in getting this country moving forward. >> ron klain and dr. kavita patel, thank you both for spending time with us. it's a disturbing but really important conversation. i'm grateful for both of you. when we come back, democrats on the hill coming to terms today with the fact there will likely be a vote on trump's yet to be announced supreme court justice nominee. how they can use this to their advantage, though. holding republicans accountable politically for their words. just weeks before close election. and it's being called ainate mare scenario. donald trump refusing to accept the results of the election if he should lose. how democrats, led by bernie sanders, are making sure that donald trump can't delegitimize the results. plus, whether it's the national reckoning we've seen on race and police reform over the fight over the supreme court, we'll head out to a college campus and look at what's

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more dangerous and corrupt president than trump. he's harming our basic values, giving rise to hate, and he's selling out america to big corporations. i'm working to protect immigrants, women, communities of color, and lgbtq people. and i'm making corporations like pg&e and insurance companies play by our rules. we need experienced leadership to wipe away trump's stain on america for good.

with donald trump's speedy announcement of justice ruth bader ginsburg's replacement expected this weekend and little question now about whether the republican-led senate will have the votes to confirm that nomny, now boosted with the likely support of mitt romney, here's chuck schumer this afternoon again slamming republican leaders as hypocritical and damaging to the entire system, the system he says only applies to them. >> if leader mcconnell presses

forward, republican -- the republican majority will have stolen two supreme court seats. four years apart, using completely contradictory rationales. leader mcconnell decided the rules don't apply to republicans. even their own rules. it's just brute political force. if that becomes the standard in the senate, how can we expect to trust the other side again. >> joining our conversation, "the new york times" editorial board member maura gay and sam stein. heilemann is still here. i want to start with you. i want to read something that i saw on your twitter feed. you were tweeting one of your colleagues who wrote, mitch mcconnell and senate republicans stole a supreme court seat. they effectively created a three-year term for obama and a five-year term for trump. if democrats add two or four seats to the court, it's not

court packing, it's restitution. >> that's right. that was jesse wegman. he's very strong views on this. and the larger problem here that we're talking about is minority rule. and so you have a situation where regardless of whether democrats are able to actually win the white house, you are talking about a 6-3 hard right court for the rest of our lifeti lifetimes. a court that would theoretically block any kind of progressive legislation by duly elected president and represent the views of the majority of the american public. so, you know, i think it's quite clear that donald trump and the republicans have the legal right to pursue this specific nomination. there's really no doubt about that. i think the larger question is, what does the american

experiment do when there's minority rule that is cemented again for a generation? it's our view, it's my view and frankly jesse's view as well that that's a real conflict. this is a court that is not going to work for a majority of americans. and so there are different ways to address that. one is by expanding the court. there are other ways as well for fm example, creating term limits on the supreme court. there's lots of different proposals out there. and i think democrats should really consider that a lot of their constituents are extremely alarmed and i think until now we report is seen that sense of urgency from democratic -- >> you know, sam stein, the politics of this surprise me so much. i mean, having worked in

campaigns, they are different than they were when i was doing campaigns. and there is overwhelming support for not ramming this through for the reasons mara gay articulated. it's 8 in 10 democrats are for letting -- and i'm talking about where the public sentiment is. 8 in 10 are for waiting for the next president. 5 in 10 republicans are, too. this is not sort of the boondogle that it used to be for the right and i've made a bunch of calls trying to figure out why that was. the people animated by the courts and judicial appointments are already with trump. they are the ones who never left and see him as personally repugnant but they're so animated by the appointments to the federal courts that have just hung in there. and i interviewed some of these people in '16. i wouldn't leave them to babysit my kids but i like his judges. so that's who is still with him. you talk about the trump base, they are people who vote on the courts. but the rest of the electorate,

the ones trump seems to be tweeting at, women largely in the suburbs, this is a loser among them. >> i think a couple of things are in play here. one, generally speaking, the public appreciates a balance of power. there's ticket splitting, of course, but in the abtract, the story here is, a party is con l consolidating long-term control of one branch of government through questionable means. now, they're legal but certainly morally questionable and definitely not consistent. i think the public generally understands in the abtract, this is not something that they support. but i think more importantly is that there are several major policy issues that immediately become extremely complicated and their futures are extremely dicey. and those are abortion rights in this country, which is a 60/40

issue, generally, nand the futue of the affordable care act which the supreme court is going to decide days after this election. the possibility exists that we'll lose -- the country will lose obamacare, and there will be no health care plan put forward by the party in the white house, controlling the senate, to replace it. that's petrifying in normal times. especially petrifying in the middle of a pandemic and those who have covid are now deemed those who have pre-existing conditions. so this is -- all this is coming to a head, and i think voters are rightfully nervous about such an abrupt change and such a threat to two major pillars of health policy. >> you know, heilemann, i have had my political horizon expanded in the hours and days since justice ginsburg lost her battle against cancer because my first reaction was that this would help and aid trump.

but i've not found a person who has not pointed to the two issues that sam just pointed to and said those issues really cross pressure any republican. i mean, john mccain or george w. bush would have had a challenging time if the final closing issues were around the kinds of things that strain that bond with people they need to bring into their coalition. they are people that need to be brought over if donald trump expects to stitch together his coalition again. and if we're talking about reproductive freedoms, as sam said, i think it's a 67% support among all women. and i think it's above -- plurality of men view roe as settled law. no one on donald trump's list has that opinion. if these are the conversations people are having at home in the final days, they do not help any of the republicans.

>> right. so i think one place at the start of this conversation, even as we sit here, we know that republicans have the votes to confirm a trump nominee and that they are almost certain loo to do that. but i'll also say almost certain just because we don't yet know what the timetable is and whether mcconnell, although lindsey graham said we're going to try to get this done before the election. it's mitch mcconnell's decision. and mitch mcconnell is focused -- as much as he cares about the courts, and he cares about the courts a lot. it's going to be one of the great -- not as if good, but mega legacies of mcconnell's tenure, but he cares more about keeping control of the senate than that. and so there is one question which is,s mcconnell looks at the politics and how it's going to affect martha mcsally, cory gardner, susan collins, the two seats in georgia, the vulnerable republican senators on which his control of the senate rests, does mcconnell decide in the end

that having this vote before the election is unwise for the reasons that you're saying because i can't help but think that even though cory gardner says he'll eventually vote for this nominee that almost all the people i just mentioned would rather not take this vote before election day. they'd rather try to get the enthusiasm they need on the republican base without scaring away the voters in the middle that taking this very controversial vote on policy and on process would lead to. so i think there's still a chance mcconnell will wait until the lame-duck and then things get more complicated. it tells you about the way trump thinks about how he's going to win is that he's not, even though he talks about these suburban housewives, he doesn't seem -- he's not really doing very much to ensure their loyalty. he's taking steps that are going to scare them. and this could be for the reasons that sam laid out and that you laid out, this could be, in the end, a thing that's

the undoing of trump if it turns out to permanently alienate a lot of those independent republican-leaning women in battleground states, in suburban areas. they look at this and say, i'm sorry, this is the last straw for me. they're already drifting away from trump over the course of the last four years. they're imperiled in every way for him. ha bility to get them back. this could be the final straw that makes it impossible for him to win. again by legal means. we can talk about why trump may want this person on the court and what it has to do with trying to snatch the election. that may be why trump wants to get this person on the court as quick as possible but that's a longer discussion. >> well, it's a longer discussion but there's zero mystery or suspense because trump said so out loud on sunday at his rally. he said we need the federal courts in place because they're going to decide this election so we can go to bed early on election night or something

along those lines. but we will keep talking about that. because you're right. and just to bount thutton this . that whole list of senators you named, the only people with them, they're no longer republican national security voters. no longer republican deficit hawks. no longer republican character voters. the only people holding that list of vulnerable candidates up are people who are satisfied with the judicial picks. there's nobody else out there. up next for us -- trump's rhetoric about election fraud is motivating big-name democrats to get out there set the record straight and make sure the president's attempted assault on democracy is not successful. that's next. from prom dresses... ...to soccer practices... ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss.

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he, accused of rape. while he, accused of stealing $5. the stanford rapist could afford bail; got out the same day. the senior citizen could not; forced to wait in jail nearly a year. voting yes on prop 25 ends this failed system, replacing it with one based on public safety. because the size of your wallet shouldn't determine whether or not you're in jail. vote yes on prop 25 to end money bail.

and when you see them cheating on the other side, i don't say if, when. when you see them cheating with all of those unsolicited ballots, any time you do, report them to the authorities. the authorities are waiting and watching. >> as john heilemann has alluded, to with just 42 days out until election day, it's donald trump who is talking about a rigged election, and it's donald trump who is the only one that looks like he's planning on cheating. it's why we're seeing democrats, even joe biden's former primary rivals, step up and go public with their efforts to ensure that trump doesn't steal this election. senator bernie sanders tells "the new york times" ahead of his speech he plans to give this week that we're in a dangerous moment for the country and that he plans to mount an aggressive

campaign against donald trump's efforts. quote, mr. sanders said he would spend the next six weeks urging the country to prepare for a nightmare scenario in which mr. trump declares himself the winner of the election and refuses to step down even if he loses. and adding to that urgency, plikplik michael bloomberg who believes the path to a biden victory runs through florida, just raised $16 million to enable former felons in that state to vote by paying off outstanding fees and fines that have prevented them from casting a ballot. it's so jarring to listen to democrats, not just make the case for their candidate in the final days, but to be prepping the country for what trump is doing. you've said it more plainly than i am, that he plans to cheat.

>> right. and it's not just that he plans to cheat. he has laid out the road map, the tactics and the strategy he has spent -- i know everybody on this show who has heard us talk about this knows this already but i'll say it again. he's told us that most -- that voting by mail, that early vote, that absentee ballots, except for the ones he casts in florida, that they're all illegitimate and part of a rigged system. so he's going to say certainly on election night, there's going to be -- he's going to stand up and say that the only vote that we -- that counts is the election day vote. and if the polls are reliable, which obviously is a huge caveat, but what we've heard consistently from polling over the last couple of months is that democrats overwhelmingly are going to vote early and by mail and democrats are going to vote overwhelmingly on election day so trump is wagering he'll be able to say in a bunch of battleground states that he won the electoral votes because he

won the majority of votes cast on that day. and in some of those states, many of those states, the counting of the votes will not be completed on election night. florida is an exception. we expect florida, which has dealt with a lot of early vote for a long time, will tell white house won on election night. but there are other states, pennsylvania, many states where we assume it could take some number of days after election day to get a final tally and trump standing up on election night and saying the only vote that counts is the election day vote and i'm president and anything that comes after this san attempt by democrats to steal the election in which democrats are just trying to count all the votes cast legally by people in battleground stayestayed states through traditional means and methods. things that have been in place in america for decades and people have voted increasingly through those means in past elections, including the tens of

millions in the 2016 election. trump is going to say all of that is an attempt not just illegitimate attempt of democrats to steal what is rightfully his. i've said before, the president has the ability to do all tnefa. don't rule out the possibility that the president on election night says i'm going to go to pennsylvania and i'm going to impound all of the uncounted ballots and sends federal marshals into polling places where votes are being tabulated and tries to impound those ballots. that's a hypothetical, but not one outside anyone's reasonable way of thinking right now. the president is telling us what he's going to do. we have to pay attention to it and i agree with every democrat who says that we have to get ready for it if we're going to hope that this election is not stolen out from under our eyes by the president. he's telling us he's going to do

it. >> sam stein, if you believe that shining a light in terms of transparency is the antidote for donald trump's stated scheme for stealing the elections, john heilemann says, what does this look like from our standpoint. what are you covering and what coverage are you looking for and what -- where should we be -- you can't avert your eyes because as john says, trump has told us he's going to do it. so where do we look? what do we cover? >> so we actually did a story at the daily beast on preparations being made on the left to handle these various situations that john has laid out. and actually, the planning is a lot more scary sounding than even john alludes to. a bunch of groups have started strategizing about what kind of hypotheticals could happen under the four typical election day scenarios. what we're talking about are millions of people taking to the streets to protest what they

deem rigged results. we're talking about capital shutdowns. people shutting down actual places of work and industries in protest. we're talking about politicians refusing to recognize the count, but also making overt threats to leave the union. we're talking about democrats demanding some of the things that we're seeing brought up in the supreme court fight such as, you know, additional seats on the supreme court, the end of the legislative filibuster. and then on the flip side in these hypothetical scenarios, the trump team goes further than that. we're talking about impounding ballots like john suggested. we're talking -- there's one scenario in this transition integrity project report where trump started a foreign conflict as a way to divert attention from the election results. we're talking about potentially the president's supporters infiltrating peaceful demonstrations to cause violence

that would then turn around and seem like they came from the demonstrators. we're talking about misinformation, disinformation. so the scope of this is vast. i don't want to take up too much time but it requires an incredible amount of both resources, planning and attentiveness by people in our industry to make sure we're not perpetrating this information but putting a light, as you put it, on some of what the -- what's going on. that's a very difficult thing for newsrooms to grapple with. we haven't seen anything remotely close to the possibilities at play here. >> you can't spend enough time on this stuff. i'm going to ask you to come back tomorrow and let's carve out more time because -- >> sure. >> i think the truth -- no, but the truth is, people are in pain. people are suffering from sort of the grief of 200,000, with the exception of the president, it would appear, 200,000 lives lost.

people are suffering under economic duress, and i think that this is something we have to steel ourselves for. and i want to understand, and i just want to push you to -- because i think all of this has happened already, right? vice president pence honored an i.c.e. agent killed in oakland but omitted the part of the story where he was killed by a white supremacist. so all the things you've described at some level or another are happening and the trump white house has made clear that they plan to look the other way. mara gay, i want to give you a last word about -- any aspect of this conversation. sort of where we find ourselves and everything the country is likely to confront in the coming weeks. >> what we're talking about here with donald trump, what he's engaged in is straight demogary. we've seen it before in the united states and it's very dark because it can have the effect of depressing turnout among some voters who might even fear for their physical safety.

this is a voter intimidation tactic. there's that aspect of it and newsrooms need to be looking out for that. especially among black americans. we have a long history of being intimidated out of going to the polls. but then on the other side, the president is laying the groundwork to suggest to his voters, if they -- if their candidate loses on election night, it's not a legitimate result. and that could lead to violence, especially considering the fact that we know from our own federal agents -- are the biggest ones this country faces domestically. so this is a very dark situation, and i think the focus on protecting the vote, having every american know what his or her plan is to vote, should be the real focus right now. >> it is dark, but we'll shine a light on it. thanks to all three of you for turning our conversation this direction. that wasn't the plan. coming up for use today is

national voter registration day. we head to louisville, kentucky, to find out what's motivating young people there. don't go anywhere.

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that's why there's otezla. otezla is not a cream. it's a pill that treats plaque psoriasis differently. with otezla, 75% clearer skin is achievable. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss. your doctor should monitor your weight and may stop treatment. upper respiratory tract infection and headache may occur. tell your doctor about your medicines, and if you're pregnant or planning to be. otezla. show more of you. our country is grappling with a deadly pandemic, a devastating economic downturn, a reckoning over racial justice and now a brutal partisan fight expected to pick up over the next supreme court justice nominee.

one city in particular is seeing all these crises converge, louisville, kentucky. they saw months of black lives matter protests sparked by the killing of breonna taylor. it is also the home of senator mitch mcconnell, who has been leading the charge to confirm trump's supreme court nominee. joining us now from louisville, cal perry. he's there today covering national voter registration day and everything that flows through that spot. tell me about it. >> yeah, and during a pandemic, too. i'm standing in the middle of one of the busiest streets in louisville. i'm going to show you first metro hall. this is all because we are waiting -- we are standing by, the city is bracing for a possible announcement from the grand jury. i've been here in louisville for the past six months reporting -- i have never seen it like this. it's just so heavy. people are scared. the streets are empty. these dump trucks, i'll swing you back around the other way, these dump trucks have been

blocking the road since 8:00 a.m. so, no vehicles have been able to get through to the downtown area. they have pedestrian checkpoints about a block away. they are stopping every car, they are looking in every car. they are interviewing everybody. and everywhere you look, everything is boarded up. and nicolle, i'm talking about maybe 20 city blocks. every single window, every single business is boarded up. we don't know when this grand jury announcement will happen. the governor is giving a press conference right now, every other answer he gives is, i don't know when it's coming down. people are anticipating in the next 24 hours we could see from that grand jury. breonna taylor was killed more than six months ago. in the state of kentucky, there is a stand your ground law. so, while people want these officers to be charged with murder, i don't think that's going to be possible. people are hoping for at least a manslaughter charge. as you can hear the helicopters over the year, they are expecting protests to widen and people to come out here in large numbers, nicolle.

>> cal, is it an issue that is bringing -- and you've been there long enough, they've been largely peaceful protests, many of these nights, is it bringing young people out to get involved or -- what is sort of the affect in terms of the election that is 43 days away? >> it is absolutely. we were at the university of louisville earlier. i spoke to undergraduates who said this is a big issue for them. th that what's been happening on these streets -- it is easy to point to breonna taylor, the coronavirus, mitch mcconnell, but here, the breonna taylor is everything, it's an every day part of life. so kids that are out of state, at the university of louisville told us this morning that this is a driving issue for them, that it is symbolic of so much more of what's going on in the country, nicolle. >> and as it should be. stay on that story, cal. if anything happens, if any decision comes down in the

breonna taylor case, just wave your arms, we'll zoom right back to you and go straight to it. thank you for spending some time with us. cal perry. >> thank you, nicolle. the next hour of "deadline white house" starts after a very short break. don't go anywhere. ry short break. don't go anywhere. what if i sleep hot? ...or cold? introducing the new sleep number 360 smart bed... ...now temperature balancing, so you can sleep better together. can it help keep me asleep? absolutely, it intelligently senses your movements and automatically adjusts to keep you both effortlessly comfortable. can it help with snoring? i've never heard snoring. exactly. no problem ...and done. so you can really promise better sleep? not promise. prove. save up to $1,000 on the new sleep number 360 smart bed and adjustable base. plus, 0% interest for 24 months on all smart beds. only for a limited time.

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putin's a killer. >> there are a lot of killers. got a lot of killers. you think our country's so nebt? >> at least he's a leader, unlike what we have in this country. >> it could be russia, but it could be lots of people. it could be sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay? i have great confidence in my intelligence people but i will

tell you that president putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today. >> you had a phone call with vladimir putin on july 23rd. did you bring up this issue? >> no, that was a phone call to discuss other things and frankly, that's an issue that many people said was fake news. >> hi again, everyone. with 42 days to go until voters go to the polls, there is new evidence that seems to make the kremlin's plan to harm joe biden and help donald trump crystal clear. current and former intelligence officials tell nbc news that the cia assessed in late august that vladimir putin and other top russian officials are probably directing a russian operation to intervene in the election by discrediting joe biden, confirming a report by "the washington post." two officials said the assessment analyzed the activities of a gentleman named

andre durkach. he's provided information to the president's personal attorney, rudy giuliani. y giuliani himself said he's interviewed the man three times. the first line of the classified assessment is, quote, we assess that president vladimir putin and the senior most russian officials are aware of and probably directing russia's influence operations aimed at denigrating the former u.s. vice president, supporting the u.s. president and fueling public discord ahead of the u.s. election in november. the biden campaign was quick to respond to what it perceives to be donald trump's subservience to vladimir putin. they said this, quote. this president is even giving russia impunity for offering bounties to terrorists for murdering american troops. it is absolutely clear who vladimir putin wants to win this election, because donald trump's foreign policy has been a gift to the kremlin.

the news comes amid open questions about donald trump's ties to russia and they compete with alarm for trump's singular status as the only western leader to give putin a mass for poisoning one of his political detractors. >> who do you think poisoned alexei navalny in russia? >> ah -- we'll talk about at another time. >> that was donald trump yesterday refusing to condemn putin for allegedly poisoning navalny in a way that other western leaders already have. in addition, france, sweden and germany have concluded that alexei navalny was poisoned by a nerve agent call ee eed noevich. so far, trump refuses to acknowledge the evidence or the crime. trump and putin against the free world may sound like an old story at this point, but there's new evidence from a new insider

account of the mueller probe that mueller's investigators were so intimidated by trump's attacks on him that they pulled back on questions of investigating trump's business ties to russia. from a "new york times" report, quote, the team led by robert mueller, the special counsel, failed to do everything it could do to determine what happened in the 2016 election, shying away from steps like subpoenaing president trump and skrut hissing his finances out of fear he would fire them. one of mr. mueller's top lieutenants argued in the first insider account of the inquiry. digging deeper, weissman offers these alarming new details. one, that the same business account that sent hush money payments to cover up alleged sexual relationships with women also received, quote, payments linked to a russian oligarch and mueller's prosecutors held back from sharing evidence to

prosecutors in new york. donald trump's free pass to putin to poison a political adversary as questions mount about whether trump's ties to russia were thoroughly investigated at all, all while new evidence emerges about putin's role in aiding trump again in the upcoming election. that's where we start this hour. former senior fbi official chuck rosenberg is here. plus, former chief of staff to the cia and the department of department, jeremy bash is back and washington correspondent for "the new york times," mike schmidt is the author of the new book "donald trump verve versus the kwits." i want to start with you, jeremy bash, and this new intelligence assessment. it goes further than what the odni already released to congress and publicly, which was intel about this russian operation to use this ukrainian lawmaker to put out disinformation that denigrated

joe biden. the development here, the sort of blockbuster incremental change in the story seems to be that we now have reason to believe putin's directing it, is that right? >> well, more than that, nicolle, if this report is accurate, this is collusion. why do i say that? because according to this report, andrei dirkach is an agent of the russian federation. his cover story is a ukrainian lawmaker, but according to this report of the assessment, he is controlled by the kremlin. point two is that rudy giuliani has been working with him, and of course, he is an agent of trump and the trump campaign. that's one plus one equals two. that is collusion. that's a direct tie between a known russian agent and the trump campaign to try to do what? to denigrate joe biden and to support donald trump in his re-election. so, the mueller report could not establish a direct tie between the russian federation and the

trump campaign, here in 2020, we have it unfolding before our very eyes. >> jeremy, tell me more. i mean, i think what people maybe have grown numb to is this question mark, but what you're describing is an answer. a plan that's out in the public and a direct tie between donald trump and the kremlin. >> i mean, unless i'm missing something, this is -- this is black and white. this is a -- a known intelligence officer who the treasury department sanctioned and called out for having ties to russian intelligence for over a decade. someone who, according to this credible news report, the cia has assessed, is an agent of the russian federation. we know that the objective of the russian intelligence service, according to what's been previously disclosed to the odni is to support donald trump in the 2020 re-election. and we know that rudy giuliani, who is, of course, not only donald trump's counselor, number one clearleader, but his bag man

on dirty tricks in the election, has met with him in at least three occasions -- to do what? to try to dig up false dirt on joe biden and help donald trump win re-election. that is straight up collusion with a foreign 25d verve say intelligence power to try to get the president re-elected. we don't need a mueller report. we don't need a senate intelligence community report, it's right here for everybody to see. >> mike schmidt, your colleagues are reporting the same development, that it is now believed by the cia, they assess that vladimir putin is likely directing the disinformation campaign around joe biden. just compare that to what we've learned about what the intelligence community understood to be going on in 2016. is it collusion out in the open? >> i mean, it's not as simple as a mad lib and just changing the year, but it echoes incredibly.

the whole central part in question of what the obama administration said about the 2016 meddling was about how involved vladimir putin was. how much he directed it. and now we have a report that appears to be saying something similar, if not maybe just a little bit lighter, with a may in front of it. so, the thing that sort of doesn't surprise me, but surprises me at the same time, is that 2016 was the greatest intelligence failure since 9/11. and it was far more complex in many ways than 9/11, because it had different facets to it, it had different types of disinformation and hacking and espionage. and we have not had that 9/11-style commission that has looked at 2016, to come up with best practices. the federal government has not remade itself, it has not created a new department of homeland security, it has not created a department of information to deal with

disinformation. very few of those -- of those sketches have been taken, so, here we are again, coming back into an election ch with probably similar tools, maybe the fbi and the intelligence community have a better handle on it, i would guess they'd probably say that, but there's no larger confidence here that the government has done anything to stop and deal with it. if anything, the president has made that perception much worse. and it's the same story. it's the same, same story. we're back in 2016. >> well, chuck rosen berg, isn't the elephant in the room that the story is different because donald trump, who was asked yesterday about mike's colleague, if he wanted to condemn the poisoning of one of trump's political dissidents, said no, no, i don't want to do that, and when jonathan swan pressed him about the russian program, which was also in a cia assessment, he sapd, no, no, i didn't talk to putin about that, why would i talk to him about

bone t bounties placed on the heads of american soldiers placed by russia? time and time again, donald trump has acted more favorably to russia's national security than ours. >> yes, nicolle. we've heard this song before. inimagine we're goi i imagine we're going to hear it right up to the election. and by the way, if trump were to win, which wouldn't in any way be good for this country, we'll hear it for four more years. denial after denial about mr. trump and russia and its intentions. i don't know how to say "four more years" in russian, but i'm sure their chanting that in the kremlin right now. if you think about the things russia would have wanted from a u.s. president but never in a million years thought it could get, it would be donald trump. it would be the dissolution of nato, or the degradation of

nato. put aside the financial dealings, the geo-political posture of the united states as embodied by our president is a vladimir putin wish list. it's absolutely extraordinary. and by the way, i think we know a lot about this. we may not know it perfectly, but between the senate intel report, that runs 1,000 pages, and the mueller, which runs 448 pages, we know a lot about what happened and we know they're coming at us again and i have no doubt what chris wray said the other day is true. they are interfering in our election and they are doing it in a way that favors donald trump and that denigrates joe biden. >> i want to ask you, jeremy bash, how the president's sound bite there yesterday that i played at the top, i think he was asked if he wanted to condemn the poisoning if, as sweden and france and germany and most other western leaders have and he refused to do so.

when you travel, you see an american president on the news, sometimes more than you even see an american president on the news here, but what message does that send around the world? >> well, he's rewarding russian interference. let me just build to the list. not only did he denigrate nato, he invited the russians into the g7. he slow rolled military aid to the ukrainians. he refused to condemn russia's attempt on an intelligence officer in the uk, a poison attack, an intelligence officer who, by the way, the united states helped win his freedom. he refused to condemn the russians for putting bounties on the heads of u.s. service members. he exited syria to russia and other powers could go in and now he's refusing to condemn russia for this poison attack against an opposition figure. i mean, that's seven things, nicolle. seven rewards that putin has received in exchange, a quid pro

quo for supporting donald trump in his re-election. >> well, you can't stop there. what do we do, jeremy? >> well, again, i -- obviously, the ultimate accountability in our system is at the ballot and this has got to be an issue, i think, in the presidential capable. it's got -- a light has to be shined on it to showcase exactly that not only did trump welcome russian interference, he's refused to condemn it, it's benefitted from it and he's rewarded it. i think if we state that clearly and make that case, i think lay it out to the american people, they're going to understand that if they re-elect the president, it's going to be to vladimir putin's benefit. it's going to be the benefit of the kremlin. if people want that, fine, but i think it harms american national security. >> michael schmidt, a third book and i'd put yours and peter

strzok's at the first two in that list, has come out with an account that really changed what we thought we knew robert mueller was probing. you revealed that the counterintelligence investigation was largely curtailed by rod rosenstein. peter strzok's book tells the story about really how once he left, he didn't know that that continued and to this day doesn't know if any of that work was ever done. andrew weissman goes much further and suggests that his former colleagues in the special counsel's office were intimidated by all the bullying and i know you were on time and time again talking about rudy giuliani's objective was to just throw sand in the gears of the mueller probe. it would appear that that worked. but the larger point seems to be, as we head into an election 43 days away, we don't know as much as we might have thought we'd known based on what thought mueller looked at. what do you make of the new accounts of the weissman book?

>> well, weissman's saying that the mueller team was reticent to look at the finances, as you were saying, in part because of the push-back and the anger and the furor that was coming from the president and his allies. if that's the case, then what it shows is just the effectiveness of what the president did. and to me, i mean, i'm not a lawyer and you certainly have enough on your show that are, but the -- that, to me, sounds like the president was trying to, at times, obstruct this investigation by saying things pubbi publ publicly, by telling different people to do different things, by dangling pardons and such. he was taking a wide range of actions and if you read into that, that piece of information, i have not read the book, but looking at the public accounts of it, it looks like the president's furor had an impact on the investigation and, you

know, the investigators were afraid to take steps because they may get fired. and there may be larger consequences to it. and to me, just as a journalist that has covered it, that sounds like pretty effective ways of throwing sand in the gears of an investigation and of obstructing it. whether that meets the legal barrier of that, i'm not sure, but that's sort of what it sounds like. >> you know, chuck rosen berg, there's something so twisted that the investigators who were investigating obstruction are now known to have been obstructed by the president's obstructive behavior and i guess -- it doesn't help anyone, really, to get wrapped around the axle and point fingers and i know many of these folks are your former colleagues at the fbi, so, i don't want to put you on the spot, but i want to ask you if we are more vulnerable. you had at one point presumed that mueller looked at trump's tax returns. it appears that did not happen.

i just wonder if you can speak from this accusation from andrew weissman, who was inside the special counsel team, that donald trump's financial ties to russia were at best underinvestigated. >> yeah, that is the accusation. i haven't read the book either, nicolle, but there's a bit of an irony here. and yes, these are my friends on the special counsel's team and yes they were my colleagues and yes i care about them deeply and respect them and trust them. it doesn't mean i would have agreed with everything they did. it doesn't get much bigger and complex than this investigation, people disagree all the time. and unless you're in the room for each of these big and difficult decisions, right, casting aspersions on it from the outside i think is deeply unfair. having said that, mr. barr laments the fact that his department is full of head hunters, by the way, an accusation that i think the ludicrous, and the president called this thing a witch hunt, which i also think is ludicrous, and now, andrew weissman is

accusing former colleagues of being overly timid. i mean, not all of these things can be true at the same time. again, they may have made decisions in ways i wouldn't have made them. when i was the head of the u.s. attorney's office, even when i was an assistant u.s. attorney meeting on a big case, we would argue and fight all the time. people had different ideas about strategy and tactics all the time. that is absolutely common in these things. there isn't a blueprint for big, difficult investigations. so, the fact that someone disagreed with some aspect of it, run of the mill, absolutely common. the fact that they take shots at former colleagues when they may not have been in the room for the decisions, that, to me is very troubling, nicolle. and again, i think my bias is getting in the way here, that doesn't make me wrong, but i want you to know what my bias is. i deeply trust bob mueller and the men and women on that team, and if they made decisions we disagree with, that happens. but timidity, no, not a chance. you look at volume two of the

mueller report and they lay out ten incidents of obstruction of justice. i'm sure they didn't want to be fired, because they had a job to do and wanted to complete it, but i don't accept that they wrp timid and scared of the president. s >> they are fortunate to have a defender in you, but i'm going to push you a little further, because you and i are good enough friends and i feel like it's my job to do this right here. andrew mccabe opened an investigation because he was worried that donald trump was con promi compromised. if you are investigating someone as a potential target of compromise, don't you look at their tax returns? >> yes. and i said on your show and other shows, i think that's an important place to start. i don't know that they didn't, but it seems like they may not have. let's assume for purposes of your question, nicolle, which is a really good one, that they didn't. that, to me, would be a mistake. again, in big, difficult, complex investigations, we don't always agree on what the tactics and strategy ought to be.

the reason you look at tax returns is at least two-fold. number one, it tells you where money is coming from and going to. and perhaps three-fold, it could be evidence in and of itself of a crime. so, do you look at tax returns? i think you do. had i been in the room, would i have been arguing that they ought to get his tax returns? absolutely. they may have had a reason for not doing it and i wasn't there to hear that discussion. do i think it's a mistake, standing back in the light of day with hindsight being perfect, in front of a tv camera, criticizing investigation i wasn't part of, yeah, i think it was a mistake, if, in fact, they made it. >> you will not hear this conversation anywhere else, because chuck rosenberg, jeremy bash and mike schmidt are not assembled anywhere else at this hour because they are here. very grateful for you having this conversation with us.

thank you so much for starting us off. when we come back, donald trump and his allies have the votes to move ahead with their plans to replace supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg. so, why are they attacking the late justice's granddaughter for simply communicating, conveying her dying wish? that's next. with the first presidential debate just one week away, former president barack obama has a stark warning about the stakes of the upcoming election. and it may well be donald trump's most e agree use coronavirus lie yet. will he pay for it at the polls? we'll talk about it. "deadline white house" continues after a very quick break. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. this is decision tech.

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this week, the granddaughter of justice ruth bader ginsburg is in the bizarre position of having to defend what she said was her late grandmother's dying wish. this, after donald trump spent yesterday dismissing it as a conspiracy. here are her powerful words. >> i asked her if there was anything she wanted to say to the public, to anyone that wasn't already out there and she said there was, and i pulled out my computer and she dictated the following sentence to me. she said, "my most fervent wish is that i will not be replaced until a new president is installed." and i read it back to her, she was very happy with that. and when i asked her, is that it? is there anything else you'd like to say? she said, the rest of my work is a matter of public record, so, that was all she wanted to add.

>> so, donald trump's baseless claims and the disrespect he showed surrounding justice ginsburg's dying wish in the final days of her life, according to her granddaughter, comes as he's plowing ahead with replacing her anyway, telling us to expect an announcement on saturday. joining our conversation, ashley parker from "the washington post" and from "the boston globe" kimberly atkins. ashley, take me through the latest. >> well, the latest is some of what you laid out. it's a president who is incapable of not just staying on message but staying above the fray and sort of letting -- it looks like by all accounts, he is going to get to appoint the justice who he wants to appoint, it will be his third appointment to the supreme court in just one term, as he himself bragged to bob woodward, that's stunning, it's very lucky for a president to get that much and he can't even resist not battling with

the late justice ginsburg's granddaughter, right? i mean, he says and he will say he views himself as a counterpuncher, but to view ruth bader ginsburg's sort of final fervent wish, as some sort of punch, is not how just about anyone else in this country would interpret it, but once the president injects that into the dialogue, it becomes something that then his aides and his team sort of feel like they have to defend or explain away or try to manage or handle and i was talking to someone today and they were speaking about this, but they were also speaking more generally and they said, look, the president is good when he's connecting with his key voters. he can be politically incorrect and free-wheeling and that's good. that is not good when he's attacking people personally, he's being derogatory and dismissive and that's exactly what this was. >> you know, kim, just to follow up on ashley's analysis, it is a

p pattern. we've been talking about his pattern of being subservient to vladimir putin. the only pat thaern is as clear and as disturbing is his fights with people who are grieving, with the khan family after they spoke out at hillary clinton's convention, calling soldiers losers and suckers. he takes vulnerable people or people at their most vulnerable moment and kicks them in the face. >> yes. not to mention all the things that he said about john mccain, both when he was alive and after he passed away. this is absolutely a pattern for this president and, you know, ashley makes an important point. this is a win for him. the senate is going to usher through his pick by all accounts, there's really nothing that democrats can do to stop them and so there is no reason for him to punch. this is -- this is actually a moment for him, if he were to choose to take it, to be respectful at a time when the nation is mourning a supreme

court justice who was as beloved as ruth bader ginsburg, the week that she will lie at the capitol and at the court. that would be a great moment for him, but he can't resist lashing out at anything he sees as an insult to him. even in such moments as now. so, there is a long -- there is a long precedent for that. >> ashley, i wonder what you're picking up from the white house on how they view the politics of the this? i've been reaching out to people who said the people who were animated by his supreme court picks, that's who's still with him, that is the trump base. they look the other way at his pearl c personal conduct, they are with him because of the gorsuch nomination, the kavanaugh nomination. that's not who he is fighting for in the last 43 days. he is fighting to reassumable the coalition that went beyond that base in 2016 and this is -- it's very debatable whether five

in ten republicans want him to wait, and it really cross-pressures him in building that broader coalition. >> that's exactly right and it's not a clear-cut political win for november when you talk to people in the president's orbit. it is a clear-cut win for a president who is animated by justices and wants to get a third pick on the supreme court. but it's something that is galvanizing, certainly, but the question is, who? as you pointed out, it is galvanizing to that base who is going to be with him no matter what, but it is incredibly galvanizing to democrats and liberals and the sort of people that joe biden needs to turn out and the sorts of people who are not necessarily that excited about joe biden. so, it may help the president excite people who are already excited, it may help him potentially turn out a few more of those people who he needs to turn out and actually get to the polls, especially in a pandemic,

but it very well may do the exact same thing on the other side and benefit someone like biden who really does need that enthusiasm from the liberal wing of the party, just as much, if not more. and that's something that nob y nobody, including people in the president's orbit, quite seem to understand the answer to quite yet. >> and you know, kim, it would seem to me that if you saw the world, or you saw the world the way justice ginsburg sees the world, as an effort to eradicate these gross inequalities and create a fairer world, there isn't anyone with a more opposite world view than donald trump. i mean, talk about this as an animating issue for democrats in the final 43 days. >> it really is an animating issue for democrats, not just on the presidential level, but also on the senate level. what has been remarkable this week is to see republican senators twist themselves into logical pretzels to try to explain how the current situation is different than it was when they stalled merrick

garland's pick after president obama made it. they're essentially saying, well, historically, we always filled the seat when the vacancy is created on a friday as opposed to before, when it was created on a saturday, you know, we never filled the seat then, i mean, it really makes about that much logical sense, this differential that they're making. and it just makes it clear. it would be refreshing if they just said, hey, we have the senate, so we can do this. we can do that in 2016 and we can do this now, because we're in control of the senate. at least that would be honest. they want the justices, they don't want the democrats to pick them. but they're trying to create this historical precedent that just doesn't exist and just makes them look more -- you know, hypocritical. and going into an election and just doing that power grab and then trying to gaslight people about it, i can't imagine that voters are missing that and i can't imagine that voters would want to reward that. voters want divided government. they want checks and balances. they don't want one side looking

as if they're rigging the game, especially with something as important as the u.s. supreme court. >> they do. voters always reach toward equal lib lee yum. ashley, kim, thank you both so much for spending some time with us. when we return, with one week to go before the first presidential debate, our friend steve schmidt and steve gibbs will talk about what it takes to win over the independent voters, all 11 of them. "deadline white house" returns after a short break. e white hous after a short break. in just 48 hours... to the university moving hundreds of apps quickly to the cloud... or the city government going digital to keep critical services running. you are creating the future-- on the fly. and we are helping you do it. vmware. realize what's possible.

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the case against donald trump. the question is her story and the vantage point from which he tells it enough to tip the scales even just a little bit? more specifically, are undecided voters convinced? according to the latest nbc news/"wall street journal" poll only 11% of americans say they still don't know who they're going to vote for six weeks from today. joining us now, robert gibbs plus political strategist and former of the lincoln project,

steve schmidt. robert gibbs, i am so intrigued by this group of former trump folks, miles taylor, really taken on if role of chief troll of the white house. his twitter feed is a delight to people who have been making these arguments for four years. elizabeth newman w, who i have d on my program and makes the arguments against donald trump from the point of a christian. she quoted scripture yesterday in making the case against donald trump. and now olivia troye, who was a member of the trump/pence coronavirus task force and is telling tales about what animated donald trump and it was about his re-election and his press coverage. >> yeah, and i think they are voices that can be quite compelling. and i think they work particularly in states where you saw obama, obama/trump voters. you talk about how few undecided voters, a poll in iowa today showed the race tied with only 3% undecided, but it was a state

that donald trump won by 9.5% in 2016. a voice like hers, i think, can be particularly compelling, especially since she's talking what she saw up close inside the white house. if you take a group of like republican voters against trump that started a new $4 million ad buy in a place like florida today, again, a state that we know is going to be very close, it has a history of strong republican turnouts, i think these voices can loosen up a vifew votes on behalf of joe biden and make a real difference in softening vote for donald trump. >> you know, steve schmidt, it's voices like olivia troye, the messages you guys are putting out, the lincoln project, it's news stories. all three of us lived in fear of that shoe that can drop in the final weeks of a presidential campaign, but i think the death of a 28-year-old ob-gyn resident

yesterday was one of the top stories on apple news. i mean, this lie that donald trump told yesterday boggles my mind and i've been covering the lies since the beginning. young people can absolutely die and he describes the 200,000 or somehow he described some chunk of those as nobody. >> it, again, nicolle, we've talked about this and i think that when joe biden walks onto the debate stage, it will be the first moment in four years where an american has the opportunity to confront donald trump for what he's done. and what he's done is, he's recked the country and he recked the country by lying to the country on at least 119 different occasions about the lethality of covid-19. he knew all along how deadly it was. he went out and told the country that it was a hoax, that it was a democratic hoax, that it would disappear. no problem, it's not lethal, you could drink lie sysol to cure id

100 other nonsensical statements. he's induced a mass insanity in this country and politicized something as simple as mask wearing. and the result of it has been ka as the trophy. we have over 200,000 dead americans, by the time we get to the end of this, we'll have more dead americans than were killed in the second world war. we have a shattered economy. the millions of broken dreams that come from that, lifetimes of hard work thrown away. we have the education of every child in this country profound lip disrupted. and america's way of life. when we consider that there won't be thanksgiving gatherings and there won't be vacations and grandparents won't be there for the birth of their grand kid or a first communion or a bar mitzvah or anything. it's on trump. and so, these are eyewitnesses to what went on in the room, as we remember the play hamilton on

shuttered broadway, right, in the room where it happens. and in the room where it happened in the white house, we know that jared kushner sat there on an ordinary afternoon, white house meeting, looking at charts and they decided we wouldn't have a national strategy because this was something that they viewed as damaging the blue state governors. and so, there you have it, right? it's the biggest lie in the history of the country. it's the most immoral act by a president in the history of the country. and the results of it all have been devastating. catastrophic. >> you know, and robert gibbs, the incompetence of it continues to put american lives at risk. we are dealing with a mask shortage, of all things. i mean, how are we on month six with everyone agreeing the world over that masks are the easiest and least intrusive way to protect ourselves, how are we out of masks?

>> ah -- that is a stunning thing to think about, because we've had months and months of this to prepare. but to build off a bit of what steve said, we downplayed this at every step of the way. donald trump and his administration, i mean, remember when it was 15 cases and going to zero, now we're at 200,000 people that are dead because of this. look at it yesterday, i mean, look at the polling numbers around people in the vac seicin how few people have confidence. the president believed this announcement of a vaccine on the eve of the election would save him, when polling now shows less than 30% of the country believes or has confidence in what he says about the vaccine. the infrastructure of our public health communications have been devastated because of this. look at a place like the uk today, where the prime minister goes on television and gerds people for what the tough winter is going to be like, reminiscent of a churchill, who understands that the challenge is in front

of us -- and it not something that have to scare people on, you have to be truthful and serious about. and you can lift them up. and you can have them feel good about their country and the direction that it's taken, but you can't downplay it, because we know downplaying this will just get people killed. >> robert gibbs, steve schmidt, i'm going to ask both of you to stick around. we're going to stick in a very short break. robert gibbs and steve schmidt on the other side. don't go anywhere. don't go anywhere. it's official: national coffee day is now national dunkin' day! celebrate with a free medium hot or iced coffee with any purchase on september 29th.

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we are back with robert gibbs and steve schmidt who in their past life at this point a presidential campaign would be advising their respective candidates about what to say. i want to get both of you on the record about a strategy for joe biden and senator harris next week. you first, robert gibbs. >> well, look, i think the -- joe biden has to use his time in this debate to go out and make a positive case for his presidency. i think the american people long ago decided they were going to fire the incumbent. i think they just want to hear what joe biden and kamala harris are going to do to move this country in the right direction. so i think i'd be thinking about how to prosecute that case, what are you going to do to fix the economy, what are you going to do to get the response to covid back on track, how are you going to reduce racial tension in this country, how are you going to move on things like climate change and the risks we are

facing, at the same time, making sure donald trump doesn't get overly aggressive, as we know he will. >> only robert gibbs could make doing all 11 of those things sound easy to a principle. steve schmidt, your turn. >> look, i think that joe biden has to walk out on the campaigns that we were involved in, the country would have been fine in john kerry was the president. and it was fine when barack obama was the president. the country is not fine with donald trump as the president. we are in an hour of profound crisis. and i hope joe biden will walk out on that stage say the man

standing next to me is the worst in history. here's the lethality of the virus. there are 150,000 fewer americans would be dead if we had the same mortality rate they had in germany. there's no reason that we shouldn't have. so that i think on a range of issues, the vice president is going to need to go at him hard. he's obligated and duty bound to defend the honor of the armed forces who trump called suckers and losers. the simple fact is he didn't seal the border with china. 47,000 chinese nationals came in. he's assaulted our institutions, the rule of law, the most corrupt in american history. nothing even close to it. i think the vice president needs to go out and say that to him and then he can talk about the initial steps that he will take to begin recovery from this crisis. because it's going to go on and on and on because of trump's mismanagement of it.

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thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these extraordinary times. we're grateful. "the beat" with ari melber starts right now. hi, ari. >> thank you so much. welcome to "the beat." as glen fray put it, the heat is on on the street. the pressure is high just to stay alive. republicans marching forward to ram through donald trump's supreme court pick, sight under seen. that puts even more heat on of course this tense campaign season with early voting already begun, we're just 42 days from election day. to be clear, nobody really knows how this political escalation in the senate will impact the wider race considering most americans already say they oppose trump's plan to ram this through. a piece of data that obviously includes at 62% some of his own