we've got a rough fall coming up. dion rabouin, thank you for being with us this morning and for your reporting. i'll be reading "axios a.m." in a little bit. you can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com. thanks for getting up "way too early" with us on this wednesday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. whenever there was like a problem, like there would be an argument or some kind of anti-trump person, you don't see that much -- i don't want to bring it on, but you don't see it much anymore, you know what? it's dangerous. it's dangerous. >> another trump campaign rally where the president celebrates violence and goes down an ugly road on a number of levels. >> oh, it was really something last night. >> and it was a superspreader event. >> it was a superspreader event, but that's what he does, and people obviously like to go out and risk their lives. and that's, of course, their choice. it's a free country. but willie, of course, we're going to be showing some clips

where the president makes comments that -- >> oh, my god. >> i don't know, we won't call them fascist comments and won't say -- >> look at these people squashed together. >> -- that it's what autocrats do and say, but it is what autocrats do and say, when you're once again glorifying violence. and as the president's long done, you know, celebrated the fact that people could get hurt at their rally if they exercise their first amendment rights. and of course, later on in the rally, the president, basically said a member of congress was not an american, that you know, the whole -- "how is her country doing?" why is she telling us what to do in "our" country? >> oh, my god. >> i'm sorry, if that's not what fascists do, i would love for a professor or somebody who studies fascism to let us know if that is not the practice of fascist leaders, and if donald

trump may not be trying to imitate them and working his crowds into a frenzy. >> we'll go through the clips, but you're right, rarely do you see bigotry as explicit as it was, donald trump talking about a sitting member of congress who came to america as a refugee as a child. we'll get into that. mika touched on those pictures we saw, totally flaunting all of the guidance from the cdc, all of the guidance from his own doctors about distancing, about masks. there are a handful of masks in there. obviously, the people behind him had masks on, as they've done before at these events. >> not all of them. >> and then as you say, glorifying violence, celebrating injuries suffered by a colleague of ours, a reporter who was shot in the knee with rubber bullets, again celebrating that, drawing large cheers from the crowd. so, he has created this culture where those kind of things, using bigotry against a sitting

member of congress, celebrating violence and not wearing a mask are all celebrated at these rallies. >> well, and listen, this is an issue. obviously, regardless of whether donald trump wins or loses this fall, this is a country that we have to look at and wonder how 40%, 45%, 46% of americans cheer and laugh and celebrate when a member of the press gets hurt, or anybody gets hurt, actually. it's not just members of the press. he's long talked about beating up people or carrying people out on stretchers at rallies who, again, exercise the first amendment rights that hamilton and madison and washington and soldiers and sailors and marines have fought for, for 240 years,

and he's up there talking about a strongman from south america, mocking outsiders, suggesting, again, that a refugee that came to america to live the american dream and then became a member of the united states congress is not an american. she shouldn't tell us what to do with our country. again, underlining this before we start -- i know he throws a lot of things at the wall all the time. but again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop every day and call fascism fascism. now, again, if you don't think this is fascist, if you don't think this is how autocrats try to whip crowds into a frenzy, let us know. i mean, maybe we'll have a discussion about it on the show.

but what i've read throughout my life, it looks that way from here, and looks like that to many americans. >> he is making all these people sick. along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus" and executive editor of "the recount," john heilemann, politics and journalism professor at morgan state university, politics editor at "the grio" and msnbc political contributor jason johnson joins us, and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early with kasie d.c., kasie hunt." >> john heilemann, let me just ask you, are we being hyperbolic here? a president talking about violence, celebrating the fact that if somebody descended, that it would be dangerous for them and laughing and drawing cheers, drawing cheers for a shooting of the member of the free press who

was where he was supposed to be legally, but got shot by a rubber bullet and the cheering that he was in extreme pain and misery? >> god. >> and also, declaring that a refugee that came to this country was somehow not a member of this country. let's listen to this bite where the president, basically, says that a member of congress is not a member of our country, because she's not white. >> you know aoc? [ booing ] not a good student. not good at anything. but she's got a good line of crap, i'll tell you that. she's got a hell of a line. and she's got -- you know, she's radical left, but she's not as bad as some of them. how about omar of minnesota? [ booing ] we're going to win the state of

minnesota because of her, they say. she's telling us how to run our country. how did you do where you came from? how is your country doing? she's going to tell us -- she's telling us how to run our country. >> she's telling us how to run our country, as if it's not her country, because like donald trump's mother and like donald trump's grandparents, she was an immigrant to the united states of america. so, john heilemann, before we get to the top of the news, i mean, tell me if it's hyperbole, or if this is not, again, what fascist leaders have done throughout the decades. >> not hyperbole. good morning, joe. good morning, mika. good morning, willie and everybody else. >> good morning. >> not hyperbole. and you know, i think all of us -- the sad part about this is

not that it's not -- not only is it not hyperbolic, but this is not like the first time, you know? >> right. >> the whole reason why i think we all -- all of us who were reluctant to use this kind of language, even after seeing donald trump do a lot of very disturbing things in the 2016 campaign -- i speak for myself and i think for a lot of other people -- you know, you didn't want to leap to notions of fascism, to the kinds of language that now not only seems not hyperbolic but seems inevitable, like unavoidable. you can't -- it's like all the same -- there are all these other labels, right? xenophobic, racist, demagogic. all of those things are things that we are reluctant to apply to, any politician, but trump has been so consistently all of those things -- racist, sexist, xenophobic, autocratic, and fascistic for so long now that

even everyone who's kind of resisted that language, now it's not even that you apply it reluctantly, you apply it because there are no other words. and he's done it so often just with these women, just with the women he's citing here, with aoc, with congresswoman omar, with congresswoman thalib, you know, with the squad, who he has chosen to demonize from the moment that these women got elected. he's done this. again, this is not the first time he's done it with them. they're some of his favorites. and your point at the top, the thing that's disturbing about the entire thing is not that donald trump is a fascist and not that donald trump is an aspiring autocrat, but is that the response to all of that has only gotten more intensely positive in his crowd. >> right. >> and whether donald trump wins or loses this fall, those people and those views that they cheer and they embrace in donald trump, that slice of the electorate will still be here, and that is why i keep saying over and over again, the man is

dangerous, but he is a symptom and not a cause. >> well, but there have been spineless republicans who have allowed this to go. many would argue that we have been too -- >> yes. >> -- unreluctant to call this out, too unreluctant to be more than shocked but to act in a specific way, people in the administration, republicans in washington. you know, those who have emigrated here from tyrants, fleeing tyrants, joe, they have been saying all along exactly what this looks like. and quite frankly, for years, it was, oh, come on. oh, come on, no, he just says what he thinks, he doesn't mean it. oh, come on. mark my words, he means it, and he doesn't care that he is standing up on a stage, far away from hundreds, possibly thousands of people that will die because they came to the event or someone else will, because they will pass the coronavirus.

he doesn't care. that's another mark of a behavior of someone like a fascist or a tyrant or an autocrat who makes it all about themselves, who wants to change this country into a dictatorship. does it sound crazy? it shouldn't, because that's where we are. >> and of course, that's where -- of course, he'd love to go there. i think even people that vote for him know that donald trump would knock down the walls of any constitutional checks and balances, would run through any madisonian checks and balances if america's institutions had not held him in check, for the most part, over the past 3 1/2 years. he has become a president who governs by gesture, because he can't use normal constitutional means to achieve any of his objectives. a day doesn't go by where a federal judge doesn't overturn one of his more extreme rulings. >> right. >> jason, we have, you know, after charlottesville, after, i

think it was maybe last summer, i think, is when the president told the squad to go back home or whatever, you know, again, just pure fascist rhetoric. and everybody's called it out before. it does seem to be more extreme now. and of course, it is clearly fascist language. but jason, can we just step back for a second, because everybody's focusing on what's coming up in five or six weeks, and can we just talk about what's going to happen over the next five or six years or the next five or six decades? america is going to cease to be a majority white nation. and if the republican party had any interest in being a part of that nation and not just turning into a modern-day equivalent of the wigs, they would have figured out a better way to not

present themselves as racists, to not present themselves, their president, at least, as fascists, telling refugees and others to get out of the country or that they're somehow not a member of this country. that's the thing about it is, yes, it is terrible, and yes, i will say it, it is evil, and yes, i'll say it, i've never heard another american politician talk like this before donald trump, but it's also stupid and short-sighted, because a hard rain is gonna fall on this republican party, even in four years, because the demographic changes are sweeping texas, georgia, arizona, florida, other states. republicans are probably not going to ever win again, especially with this kind of rhetoric. this is their last shot. >> well, so, a couple things, joe. i've got to point out, john was

talking about this before -- lots of people were saying this was going to happen. >> right. >> in particular, journalists of color were screaming about this in 2015, that this man wanted to be an autocrat and that he was a white nationalist. and i want to be clear, we've had plenty of presidents and politicians who were racist. a white nationalist is different. a white nationalist is someone who says, i don't want anyone who's not white to be in control of the levers of government or policy or economics or education. he was a white nationalist. we've been calling it for years. and i want to put this in context. i'm glad that you're starting talking about fascism. i'm going to share a little story. in the early 2016s -- >> hold on, jason, i need to stop you for one second. yes, black journalists were saying it. white journalists were also saying it. hispanics were also saying it. in early december, after donald trump talked of his muslim ban, in december of 2015, i actually asked, after saying i could never vote for a man like donald trump in december of 2015, i asked, is this what germany

looked like in 1933? is that where we are now? >> mm-hmm. >> is this germany? but see, that's the thing, we saw that. a lot of people saw that in 2015. but i must tell you, in 2015, i never thought i would see the crowds of people cheering on language like that. >> that's just stunning. >> that's what is still stunning to me today. nothing about donald trump's stunning. those crowds cheering on fascist rhetoric, that's frightening. >> so, a couple things about that, joe. and i'm glad that you mentioned germany, because that's where i was starting. in 2016, i was on a speaking tour with the german consulate, going around the country talking about the 2016 election. i was talking sort of a german equivalent of npr in frankfurt and everybody was asking me, is he going to get elected? the germans were really worried. there was an older woman there,

and i said, look, the numbers say probably not, you know, et cetera, et cetera. he says these really crazy racist things. it seems unlikely. the electoral college doesn't work in the favor. and the oldest woman in the room, who was in her 80s, said we were saying the same thing about hitler in the '30s, in germany. so, you're right, joe. i mean, i was across the ocean and had germans saying, i can't believe you americans don't see that this is coming. and i think the most worrisome part that i have to say in all of this is, you're right, yeah, there were people who called it out, black people, latinos, asians who called it out. i think it took too long for many members of the press to accept that. and people who were saying it in 2015 were sometimes called, you know, you're being hyperbolic, you're using extreme language, it won't get that bad, other people will keep him in control. and that's why we are where we are today. >> well, i think, and that really is right now the question, mika. and we'll go into our news. but the question is, how long do

the institutions hold up if donald trump is re-elected? that's really the question here. again, the federal judiciary has done a pretty exemplary job of holding donald trump's worst instincts in check. the press, the investigative corps of the press, they've done an exemplary job in many ways as well. but where he breaks through these norms and where polite society is not allowed to say, this is -- he's talking the way fascists talk -- that's where there is a concern. and i will say, again, i have long had faith in the institutions of this country to hold donald trump in check. i believe the institutions of this country have done a good job, for the most part, other than the spineless congress, the spineless united states senate, of holding this man in check and

his worst autocratic, fascist instincts. >> yeah. >> i think, though, what moasha guessin has said, what jay rosen has underlined at nyu, is the fact that we haven't been as good in the media of moving beyond our current political lexicon, the political lexicon, the language, the boundaries of debate that we've used over the past 240 years because we've never had a president that's spoken like this. >> with a complicit congress, with a complicit a.g. >> with a complicit congress, yes. >> this is the difference. >> and with a complicit administration. >> yeah, and a complicit administration. this has been a horrific storm in a number of different ways. and i think the conversations we will have long after this,

hopefully, if this country survives it -- dead serious. >> we'll survive it. >> will be fascinating. i want to get to willie. but just to add to this, because we're about to get to the new cases and positivity rates of the coronavirus. willie, i just think, to add to what joe was saying, the one thing that may get through to fervent trump supporters, and i mean republicans in washington, members of his administration, and the people you saw at those rallies, is science. there will be people who get the coronavirus at the rate these numbers are going, whether it's family members or whatever, and it's going to be a clear view of the president said one thing on stage. it's practically non-existent, to losing a family member. it may come down to science that shakes people to see that perhaps he doesn't have the country's best intentions in mind. >> well, we certainly, willie, don't want that to happen. >> no. >> and that's why it pains us

when we see people crowded in together without masks. >> oh, it's horrific. >> it is horrific and it's frightening. >> it's grotesque. >> and we pray. we pray for even, you know, for the people that were there last night. we pray for their health, the health of them, the health of their families, the health of their children, the health of their parents and grandparents, the health of -- i mean, we pray for all of those people who, you know, i will say, we believe are being terribly misled. >> yes. >> well, the problem is, with president trump's encouragement, it's become a badge of honor now to attend these rallies, to not wear a mask. we heard in ohio when the lieutenant governor a couple nights ago was holding up a mask, he was booed. that's because donald trump has created a culture where this has become a middle finger to who? to doctors? to science? to whoever donald trump has told them is the bad guy in all of this. and one of the reasons this is increasingly concerning is because new cases and positivity rates of coronavirus are

continuing to rise at concerning rates. the "washington post" analyzed public health data, found 27 states and puerto rico have shown an increase in the seven-day average of new confirmed cases since the final week of august. minnesota, montana, oklahoma, puerto rico, wisconsin, wyoming, and utah set record highs monday for their seven-day averages. before president trump held that rally at the pittsburgh international airport last night, in front of a densely packed crowd, as you can see in this photograph, the president said this at the white house. >> why haven't you said anything about the u.s. hitting 200,000 deaths from covid? >> go ahead. anybody else? >> the grim milestone today of 200,000 deaths to the virus. what do you want to say to the american people? >> well, i think it's a shame. i think if we didn't do it properly and do it right, you'd have 2.5 million deaths.

if you take a look at alternatives, you could have 2.5 million deaths or something thereabouts. you could have a number that would be substantially more. but it's a horrible thing. should have never, ever happened. china let this happen, and just remember that. >> so, mike barnicle, the president's saying, "it's a shame. china should have never let this happen," creating a number, 2.5 million, pulling that out of thin air and comparing it to the 202,000 deaths that you now see on the bottom of your screen and saying, well, in comparison to that, it's not so bad. the president is doing more than wanting to always play it down, as he told bob woodward. he's ignoring it, literally, in the case of that first question, ignoring the question of what he would say to the 200,000 families who are suffering right now. >> what could he say? it's my fault? i choked? i didn't do my job? he's not going to say any of that, willie. i have to tell you, the last 20 minutes of this conversation is

both enlightening and depressing at the same time, but it's a conversation that i think the nation has to have. going into november and beyond. and it's the realization that everything we heard this morning, every snippet that we heard from the president, donald j. trump, of the president of the united states, is further indication and proof that he has changed our country. he has changed our country for the worse. now, whether it's irreparably changed, we're going to find out as time goes on. but everything he has touched, everything he has spoken about, he has altered reality, and it's not just the 200,000 deaths. he has managed to take the fact that more than 200,000 people are dead from a virus that he didn't know how to wage war against, and knocked it down in terms of people's focus, because he talks about the supreme court, he talks about congresswoman omar from

minnesota. he talks about things like that to get people off the track. and sometimes, we follow him off the track. but in addition to the 200,000 deaths, there are millions, millions of people today, families today, fractured economically because the united states congress, specifically the united states senate, the republicans in the united states senate, will not bail them out when they're drowning economically right in front of them. so, the country has indeed changed. and whether it's unalterably changed, we're going to find out, but it sure is depressing. >> and if you look at the election results since donald trump got into office, whether it was 2017 with those incredibly long lines in virginia, with women standing in line all day to vote against donald trump in the form of ed gillespie or what you saw in special elections in alabama,

what you saw in the historic landslide victories for democrats in 2018 as donald trump tried to use racism and bigotry and caravans and diseased immigrants and diseased refugees against the democrats. that didn't work. there was a landslide victory there. we saw the same thing in 2019. democrats winning governorships in louisiana and kentucky, and if you look at the polls now, kasie, it doesn't look like it's working now. and yet, the president's doubling down. he's tripling down on this sort of logic, on this sort of campaigning that appeals, we still believe, to a minority of the country, to maybe 40% of the country, 41% of the country, 42% of the country. but i will say, yes, as early as

december 2015, i was asking if this is what nazi germany -- or what germany looked like in 1933, before the rise of hitler. but at the same time, i never imagined that my republican party -- never imagined that my republican party would fall in line behind a man like this who continues to use fascist language. and yet, there they are, silent, no protests, going along for the ride. >> i mean, i've lost count of the number of times and the number of issues and the number of comments that i have asked republican senators on the hill about. it feels like it's something new every day and their reaction is almost always the same with a handful of exceptions. the one thing i will say -- and i'm with mike in terms of it feeling depressing. but there are a couple of things.

first of all, let's remember that hillary clinton did, in fact, win the popular vote. there were more people that voted for her than voted for donald trump. so, that says that there are americans who saw what donald trump said, saw that language and said, you know what, this is not for me. and the second thing is that when mitt romney lost michigan in 2012, he did it with more votes than the votes that donald trump got in michigan, and he won in michigan, which also tells me that there are a lot of republicans out there that also, you know, don't like this language, that reject it, a lot of republican voters. and i do think that the most important thing for americans today is, if this is not the country they want, if living in this is not what they want, then the majority of those people should actually show up to the polls. it's going to be harder than ever because of the pandemic, because of the coronavirus. we're all covering the issues related to ballots and making sure you're safe as you go out and do that.

but while, you know, republicans like to talk about the silent majority, i think there is a majority majority. and when i go out into the country -- and you know, we haven't been able to do this as much because of the pandemic -- but there are good people across this country who, maybe they have disagreements, but at the end of the day, they don't like this rhetoric. i mean, that's who you hear from even people who voted for trump. when you say, you know, "what is giving you pause?" they say the tweets is usually how they put it, but what that means is, they don't like this divisive, chaotic language. and you know, the reality is the one way that people have to express this is on election day. >> well, we saw it hasn't worked, mika, certainly didn't work in wisconsin, when donald trump went to kenosha, tried to gin up the base by making it what he called the law-and-order sort of tour around kenosha in wisconsin. but his definition of order was celebrating a teenager from out of state rushing through the

streets shooting people with an ar-15. the people in wisconsin, well, if you believe the polls, they disagreed. >> there's so much to see here from what you just mentioned, to trump's racism last night at the rally to the scotus decision, which is his constitutional right, but which will upset many. but i really think that we have already -- and we need to stay focused on this. i think voters should stay focused on this. i mean, look at the rally yesterday. look at all the people squashed together. this is just like tulsa. remember tulsa? the numbers of coronavirus cases in that area in the days and weeks after the tulsa event popped. herman cain died. we don't know if he got it there, but he was at the tulsa event. the trump campaign took the social distancing stickers off the seats at that event so they

could squish everybody down to the bottom of the stadium so that they could have their photo op. these are superspreader events, and the president is using his followers and their joy and ferv ferveancy to come and see the president to get a photo op, to try to get more votes, to gin them up, to use that racism, to make them laugh and boo at people and spread that hatred. but stay focused, because your president isn't serving you in terms of your safety. if you go to an event like this. and obviously, everybody -- we, i pray for the health of these people who show up to president trump's rallies. i also pray for your wisdom, because your health is at risk when you go to a rally like this. and you're putting yourself at risk. you're putting the president over top scientists. and i think if we stay focused on that, we may see the way forward here, because most americans want their family

members to lead healthy, happy lives, and that's not happening as long as this virus is mishandled so terribly. >> and we have 202,000 people who are dead. we ran a clip before where donald trump had said it was china's fault and it should have never happened. of course, trying to paper over the fact that he has lied to you, the american people, every step of the way. when donald trump said that it was one person coming in from china and it would soon go away, when he said it was 15 people but soon it would go away. that man, donald trump, had already been told by his national security adviser that this was going to be the most grave crisis he ever faced. when donald trump lied to you because he didn't want his precious stock market to go down, because he didn't want to lose money in all of his trump

properties, he had already been told, even by his trade adviser in a long frightening memo at the end of january that 500,000 american souls could lose their lives. donald trump, even after that, willie, called it a democratic hoax. he said it was the latest democratic hoax. >> why are republicans? >> his supporters on tv called it a hoax. even after donald trump had been given the information throughout january, donald trump kept lying about it, not to stop a panic on main street but to keep the trillions flowing on wall street. and as we are finding out now, as we've always said, as donald trump doesn't seem to understand, there is a great

divide between success on wall street and survival on main street. >> i encourage everybody, if they haven't yet, really to sit and read bob woodward's book, not just because it's a good read but because it's a document for history, and it's so much worse than we're even able to capture in a three-hour television show every morning. he knew, as you say, from early on in january. he knew how deadly it was. he knew it was airborne. he knows, he knows, he knows. and yet, he's gone out and tried to downplay it throughout. and i would just end by saying, mika, that to your point, americans are focused on this. if you look at polling, if you go out to a coffee place, they can't help but be focused on this. they can't help but be focused on it because someone in their life is sick, someone in their life has died, someone in their life or they have lost their job, their kids are not in school. people's lives have been turned upside down. so, the president can talk about law and order. he can talk about ilhan omar, if he wants to. but coronavirus is not going to magically disappear for him.

>> all right. still ahead on "morning joe" -- >> i could say, too, most of the places, mika, where we've been -- and we've been a few places, north and south -- most of the places where we've been, the people that we have come in contact with -- and a lot of them donald trump supporters -- in fa have been extraordinarily cautious and safe and have worn masks and don't go into buildings with a lot of people, unless everybody in there socially distanced and wearing masks. i've seen it among trump supporters, among biden supporters, among apolitical people. like willie said, people know what's in front of them. they understand how serious it is. that's why those events are so jarring, even to us after all these years, to see people putting their lives in danger

because donald trump has lied to them from day one about the worst pandemic in over a century. still ahead on "morning joe," latest from capitol hill as republican senators appear to fall in line over president trump's push to film ruth bader ginsburg's supreme court seat. and as we go to break, a note that joe's new book, "saving freedom: truman, the cold war, and the fight for western civilization," is coming out november 17th, and you can preorder now. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. this is decision tech.

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♪ all right, live look at the white house. welcome back to "morning joe."

it's 39 past the hour. >> so, john heilemann, let's take a quick look at a couple of polls that came out yesterday that are, again, surprising only because, well, because they're so close. we had, of course, the georgia poll that came out that, again, has shown -- all the georgia polls have shown over the past month or two a race that's tight. this "atlanta journal-constitution" poll does the same. donald trump 47%, joe biden 47%. and then in iowa, ann selzer's poll, gold standard poll, also shows iowa is now tied. and in iowa, fascinating numbers, if you dig into the numbers. the gender gaps are astounding. and women support joe biden, 57% to 37%, and men support donald

trump 57% to 36%. what a pronounced gender gap. >> it's amazing, right? and i mean, it's worth pointing out a couple things about those polls, joe, number one. georgia and iowa are not battleground states. and so, the fact that they are battleground states in terms of how close it is -- these are, as you say, consistently now for months we've seen these two states be statistical ties. and as i said, remember, always, six core battleground states where both campaigns are competing with money, with effort -- wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, north carolina, florida, and arizona. georgia is the state that donald trump won easily, and iowa's a state that donald trump won easily in 2016. right now, both of those states are toss-ups, which tells you about how deep in his own -- on his own end of the field donald trump is fighting from right now. and the iowa poll, i think, both because we know how good ann

selzer's polls are, and because it lays bare that gender gap so starkly in that state, tells you it has implications not just for iowa, that iowa's very much in play, but also, you think about what is about to happen with respect to the supreme court pick, where there is no doubt -- and i know we're going to talk more about this on the show -- but there is no doubt that the installation of a conservative donald trump-picked nominee on the court, whether that happens before election day, as now seems increasingly likely, though not certain, but whether it happens now or it happens in the lame duck session, is a huge victory for conservatives in terms of jurisprudence, the future of american life on a vast array of fronts, right? but there are political risks and political costs that could be entailed here. and you look no further than iowa, where that gender gap could be wildly exacerbated by the selection of an anti-choice,

anti-affordable care act justice. if democrats and joe biden drive those arguments in these closing weeks before election day, you could see that gender gap widen. and an animated women, female side of the electorate in states like iowa, it could look like 2018 all over again, where at the house level, it was women, both democratic base voters among women, but also in that middle of the electorate, the fact that women turned against donald trump made all the difference in those midterm elections, and they could be the thing that costs him the presidency and costs republicans the senate. >> well, you know, it is so interesting. in iowa, dave wasserman had put out a list of the voters who voted for donald trump who were pro-choice in states. and you had so many states that were in the 20s, including ohio at 20%. people identified themselves as pro-choice voters who still voted for donald trump.

in no state is that number higher, john, than iowa. it's 25%, which means one in four voters for donald trump in 2016 consider themselves pro-choice. this is not good news for joni ernst. it's not good news for donald trump. i think it will keep that race close. let's talk about one other thing really quickly -- >> correct. >> -- john, you've always brought this up, and that is that, yeah, we've got the horse race, we've got the head-to-head races. but if you look at history, incumbent presidents usually end up about where they are with their approval ratings. and you've always brought this up. and what does that mean for donald trump? >> well, if you look at polling over the last two years, and maybe stretching back even further, but certainly over the last two years, trump's approval rating has been very consistent. i mean, it moves in a very narrow band, but it sits pretty

consistently somewhere between 41% and 43%. if you know, if you took the average of all these polls on the national level, trump's basically got a 42% approval rating, and that's correct, joe, historically. you know, it's not necessarily true of challengers. their approval rating sometimes doesn't correlate with their vote share on election day, but incumbent presidents, by the time you get to election day, the approval rating of the incumbent president, his vote share, national vote share, are almost always identical. it's a stunning correlation over many, many election cycles. so it tells you that if donald trump performs on election day on the national level -- now, know the national level's not how you play presidential politi politics, but there are implications, because the president got 44% of the popular vote in 2016. if he drops to 42% of the popular vote in 2020, it doesn't mean he can't win, doesn't mean he can't pull an inside straight in the battleground states, but it is really hard, you know,

without third-party candidates of any consequence this time, a world where donald trump is at 42% is a world where joe biden is in the mid-50s. and it's very hard to imagine how you win an election without stealing under those circumstances. >> kasie, we're just getting new polls in the last few minutes. abc news/"washington post" poll in the state of florida and the state of arizona. florida has donald trump up four points among likely voters over joe biden, 51%-47%. arizona, in a poll that doesn't reflect what we've seen in other polling, tied in this poll, at least, 49%-48% for trump, a statistical tie there. the lead for president trump, it looks like, as i look at the numbers, is on the economy still, where he's plus 11 over joe biden in florida, plus 15 over joe biden in arizona, keeping himself close there. >> the economy is the one issue, and it's part of why, i mean, yes, the supreme court fight is

clearly a focus for republican base voters, but it also in some ways does distract from what is potentially the president's, you know, best message available, which is to try and redirect the conversation. but i mean, if that florida number is real, and i think, you know, i think we all know it's a little closer than that in florida. but if they take -- if you take florida off the map for the president, it becomes so incredibly hard for him to find a way to 270 electoral college votes. and just to pick up on what john heilemann was saying about the president's approval rating. you know, that also has huge implications for the senate map. i mean, this is the crop of people that were up in -- or that won in 2014. and i covered all of those individual races. and at the end of the day, all of the democrats in those seats -- you know, why republicans hold so many of these seats is because they all lost. none of them could overcome president obama's approval rating. it just dragged them down. and you know, i do think there's a question.

you know, there are obviously individual circumstances. the female vote in iowa that we showed down in that poll. but you're also potentially talking about all kinds of other places that are farther down. i mean, montana, i think, is a real sleeper race to watch, if the president's approval rating is stuck down at 42%, the way hileman was talking about. you know, lindsey graham, i don't necessarily think is in real danger, but he's working hard. he knows he's got a race. and i had a source say to me privately, you know, if we're worrying about lindsey graham in south carolina, we're looking at a blowout across the map. i don't think that republicans haven't thought about that as a real possibility in terms of trying to overcome this approval rating number. >> yeah, and this "washington post" poll has nick sally and mark kelly tied in the state of arizona. again, that polling, especially at the presidential level, looks a lot different than other polls we've seen out of arizona that show joe biden with a lead there. jason johnson -- >> well, and willie, if i can just say also, in those senate races, too, a lot of times when

i'm looking at polls to try to figure out how accurate they are, i compare not only the presidential races to other presidential polls in those states, but also the senate races and how much they line up with all the other polls. the arizona poll, especially, is wildly out of step and is an outlier, if you believe just about every other poll that's been taken, in the senate race, especially. i don't think you would find a single pollster who took that poll for the "washington post" that would put money on martha mcsally being tied in a dead heat right now with mark kelly. and same thing with the arizona poll. so, both of those polls are -- who knows? we always wait and see. maybe in a week the other polls will catch up with these "washington post" polls. but they certainly look like outliers in the most dramatic of ways. >> so, jason johnson, i'll give you a crack at these. take your pick of the states. what do they tell you about this race right now?

>> well, look, i have for a while now said i think florida's kind of red, and i think it's going to be very, very difficult. but i will pay attention to georgia. georgia, i think, is a very interesting case because of voter suppression. we saw this in 2018. and i think -- sometimes when we talk about the context in which we talk about things, i don't think you can talk about elections in georgia without talking about cheating. it's kind of like you can't talk about the astros, you know, without sign-stealing. and if joe biden is tied right now with donald trump in georgia, he's basically winning. i mean, to be a democrat who is tied in that state, you're basically winning. the question is going to be, how much can democrats get out the vote in the face of the voter suppression that we've seen from brian kemp over and over and over again? that's going to be the real punish, because i think in a lot of these places, the polling has been consistent. joe biden is overperforming hillary clinton. donald trump is underperforming where he was in 2016.

donald trump is dragging down republicans across the country. but can democrats protect the vote? and can we make sure that we discuss this -- and i think this is always important, in terms of we can't forget about what's happening at the post office. we can't forget about the fact that republicans sued in iowa to get 50,000 absentee ballots that were sent, sent back and rejected. so, there's still a legal battle going on and a suppression battle going on that we have to put in the context of the polls, even if the polls appear to be very good for joe biden right now. >> all right. the united nations general assembly is meeting virtually for the first time in the u.n.'s 75-year history, amid the coronavirus pandemic. and in a recorded address from the white house yesterday, president trump had some tough talk on china. >> we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world -- china. in the earliest days of the virus, china locked down travel

domestically while allowing flights to leave china and infect the world. china condemned my travel ban on their country, even as they canceled domestic flights and locked citizens in their homes. the chinese government and the world health organization, which is virtually controlled by china, falsely declared that there was no evidence of human-to-human transmission. later, they falsely said people without symptoms would not spread the disease. the united nations must hold china accountable for their actions. >> okay. joining us now, the president of the council on foreign relations and author of the book "the world: a brief introduction," richard haass. i guess, richard, first your take on what we just heard from the president. >> well, look, mika, the president is right in the sense that china did not meet its international obligations in the

opening weeks of this, what became a pandemic. the world health organization clearly failed to hold china to account. but that said, what we saw yesterday in that part of the five or six-minute speech, strikingly short, was -- that china is not responsible for the fact that the president holds a large rally where people don't wear masks. china's not responsible for our failure to come up with adequate, on-the-scene, quick-result testing. go on and on and on. that's on us. and so, what you basically saw yesterday was a campaign speech, not a foreign policy speech. >> mike barnicle. >> richard, the constant chatter from donald trump about china would pose the thought in china's mind, i would think, that you know, oh, he wants to make us a real enemy. so, what is the future with regard to united states' relations with china? what would be the most optimistic view you'd have about the best way to go about dealing

with china? >> well, you're right, mike. let me put it this way. this is the defining relationship of this moment of history, just like the u.s./soviet relationship dominated the four decades of the cold war. this will -- as the u.s./china relationship goes, so will a lot of the next few decades of this century. the most optimistic, i would say, is the united states and china would have some profound differences over how china, you know, organizes its society, its economy, over what it does in its region. we would push back where we must, say in the south china sea or on taiwan. but -- and it's an important but -- we would preserve, we would carve out areas where the united states and china could still cooperate, say on climate change or global health, or maybe dealing with north korea's nuclear weapons and missiles. that, i think, is the best we could hope for. at the other extreme is the united states and china end up in some kind of a conflict, be

it over the south china sea or over taiwan, where things get so poisonous in the economic space that it spills over, and not only does our trade relationship essentially unravel, but our ability to cooperate on any geopolitical issue disappears. so, that right now is in the balance. and i'd say one other thing. regardless of who wins this november, this is going to be an awfully difficult relationship to orchestrate. if you look at what the people around vice president biden are writing and saying on china, it's also very, very tough. so, managing this relationship, i think, will place all sorts of demands on both governments. and i'll be honest with you, i'm not sure either country is up to managing this relationship right now. >> you know, richard, this reminds me a good bit of the 1992 campaign, where bill clinton was harshly critical of china throughout the entire campaign. obviously, people were talking about the butchers of tiananmen square. bill clinton was criticizing george h.w. bush. and of course, criticizing his

national security adviser for raising a toast shortly after tiananmen square. brent scowcroft explained the extraordinarily difficult position he was in at that time, so history explains that far better than it looked in the moment. but then, bill clinton went in, talked to george h.w. bush, and it's as if after the briefing on china, he understood that simply confronting china and starting a cold war with china was not an option. this is not the soviet union in 1947. and i find it hard to believe that joe biden and joe biden's team, and at least a few members of donald trump's team don't understand, or do understand that we don't have the option of just turning our backs on china and walking away. like you said, this is the defining relationship of the next 50 years.

the question is, how do we make it work? what are your suggestions? >> well, joe, look, you make a really good point, and that's why all this talk about coupling, united states and china having an economic divorce is just talk. the united states and china are too intertwined. china's too present everywhere economically. we're going to have to work it out. but i think it's also true that xi jinping's china is qualitatively different than what we've seen for several decades now. look what happened in hong kong. and they violated their international agreements. they cracked down hard. look at how they're dealing with millions of uighurs, putting them in internment camps. look at what they're doing up against their border with india, how they're militarizing islands in the south china sea, putting more pressure on taiwan and japan. this is a much more assertive china. china's essentially saying, we're powerful, we've arrived, deal with it. so, even though a biden administration or a trump administration might want to

work out some kind of a viable relationship with china, my point is, simply, it's not going to be easy because it's a much more assertive china, it's much more powerful. one of the critical things we have to do to make it work is we've got to stop doing it unilaterally. the united states has a tremendous advantage. we wake up every morning with dozens of allies in europe and asia. we should enlist them to collectively put pressure on china to encourage the kind of behaviors that we want to see, to discourage those we don't. we've got to give up on this unilateral approach to them. >> all right, richard haass. thank you very much for being on this morning. still ahead, mark leibovich joins us with his new reporting on the biden campaign and what he's calling biden's stealth campaign rallies. and covid cases are on the rise, up 20% compared to a week ago. is this the beginning of the fall surge that officials warned about? "morning joe" is coming right back. about? "morning j" oeis coming right back from prom dresses...

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>> i've been hit! i've been hit! he'd been hit! the one with the shaved hair, shaved hair. maybe i'll do that one day. i'll give it up, i'll say. but it's shaven. but he went down and he didn't like it. he was hit. >> you know, it's interesting. for a man who is terrified of mosquitos -- >> i know. >> for a man who's a coward when a mosquito gets within ten feet of him. it's fascinating that he laughs

about a guy getting shot by a rubber bullet and going to the ground, willie. and this is now part of his schtick, mocking a member of the free press for doing what the first amendment allows him to do, what so many americans throughout history have fought for the right for us to do, the very thing that separates us from countries like russia and other totalitarian regimes. and donald trump celebrates in it. and again, take it beyond the press and let's just talk about the celebration and the laughing and the applauding -- >> does it sort of sinatra style. >> -- of somebody getting hurt and being in excruciating pain. that is now a punch line at a rally. >> yeah, and he's not a reporter at cnn. he's our colleague, ali velshi, here at msnbc. a great reporter who goes out

and covers just about every story before coming home and hosting his show on the weekends here. he works with us here at nbc news. and yeah, getting shot with any kind of bullet, whether real or rubber, is a strange, bizarre, demented thing to joke about. and to add to his list of greatest hits. and as you said, it's one thing for him to say it. it's another thing for a big crowd to laugh at it, almost because they're expecting it, they know it's coming, like one of their favorite songs at a rock concert. and they laugh along with it. but not thinking about what exactly they're laughing at. but he's conditioned his crowds that this is okay, it's fake news, they're out to get us, so every once in a while, they get hit with a bullet, they deserve it. and that's a really dangerous place to go when you start graduating from jokes to rubber bullets to, god forbid, something worse than that. so, that is our colleague, ali velshi, and donald trump has d added him now to his list of greatest hits at these rallies. >> and remember, this is the same man who also celebrated a republican candidate for congress beating up a reporter

for asking him a question about health care. this is the same candidate who in 2016 side, beat somebody up, and i'll pay for your legal bills. this is the same guy in 2016 who said, i remember back in the good old days, they used to carry people out on the stretcher. this is the same guy that's been celebrating violence over and over again. and the question is, as president of the united states, the question is, why do people in the audience laugh and applaud when he talks about violence, when he talks about beating up people, beating up reporters, beating up protesters? i just, i wonder. i've never heard another politician -- i've never heard another american politician say such a thing, never heard a crowd applauded such a thing. before trump, if somebody had said that, i think there would probably be gasps in the

audience. i couldn't have imagined. i held hundreds of town hall meetings. i couldn't have imagined ever saying anything like that. and i'll say it right now, i couldn't imagine, at least back then, lindsey graham ever saying such a thing. i couldn't imagine every other republican, every democrat i was with actually celebrating the pain and agony of somebody shot by a rubber bullet, the pain and agony of getting beaten up, but it has become an applause line. and at least for this segment of the american population, what it bodes for american democracy is just not a good thing. and i just have to say on a personal note, is this something their parents would be proud of? i'm sorry to be so simple, but, i mean, did their parents raise them to act like this? >> would you tell your children to behave this way? >> would they allow their

children -- >> if their teachers did this? >> would they allow their children at school to laugh and celebrate when somebody had gotten beaten up on the playground? is that something that -- is that a value they would love their children to be, going around bragging about somebody getting hurt and their friends laughing at somebody getting hurt? what about the god they worship? is this something they pray about on sunday mornings? cheering for the physical pain and agony of a fellow human being? it is -- it raises a lot of questions, few of them comforting. >> joining the conversation, chief national correspondent for "the new york times magazine," mark leibovich. donny deutsch is here. and editor at large for the non-profit newsroom "the 19th," msnbc contributor errin haines, and our own kasie hunt. kasie d.c. is still with us as well. so, let's look at where we are

here with the coronavirus, because there are new cases and positivity rates of the coronavirus that are continuing to rise at concerning rates. the "washington post" analyzed public health data and found that 27 states and puerto rico have shown an increase in the seven-day average of new confirmed cases since the final week of august. minnesota, montana, oklahoma, puerto rico, wisconsin, wyoming, and utah set record highs monday for seven-day averages. before president trump held the rally at the pittsburgh international airport in front of a densely packed crowd -- look at this -- he was asked about the 200,000 americans who have died from the virus. >> why haven't you said anything about the u.s. hitting 200,000 deaths from covid? >> go ahead. anybody else? >> mr. president, could you speak to the grim milestone

today of 200,000 deaths to the virus? what do you want to say to the american people? >> well, i think it's a shame. i think if we didn't do it properly and do it right, you'd have 2.5 million deaths. if you take a look at alternatives, you could have 2.5 million deaths or something thereabouts. you could have a number that would be substantially more. but it's a horrible thing. should have never, ever happened. china let this happen, and just remember that. >> donald trump also let this happen, donny deutsch. >> you let it completely run rampant across this country. >> donald trump lied to the american people. we have it on tape, actually, time and time again, not because he wanted to stop a panic among americans. that would be like a doctor telling me two years after a cancer diagnosis, where he kept me in the dark -- i didn't want you to panic. i wanted your kids to be happy. no, that's not what you do, when

you know there's a once-in' a-century pandemic coming, which matt pottinger warned him in january, you need to think of this like the 1918 spanish flu. when his advisers are warning that 500,000 americans could die. donald trump still going out, lying to the saying it's one person come china and it will go away magically. and the lies about the masks, the lies about the social distancing and the truth that he continues to force on the cdc. what does that do? that leads to a lot of his supporters going in tightly p k packed spaces without wearing masks and putting the lives of themselves and their loved ones in danger. here we are, six months later. donald trump still hasn't learned a thing. >> look at that crowd. before i get to covid what stunned me -- and alex, if we show some of the kind of actual

live shots of the crowd -- there's not one person of color anywhere. like, usually behind him he puts one kind of token in there, a token person. if you scan this crowd, this is stunning. it is -- if you go not even behind him, but through the thousands and thousands of people. and this, to me, looked like a rally from the early '30s. you know, joe, i was watching the first hour. and as jeh johnson was talking about, comparing to hitler. and you know, that's something you cautiously do, because we can use the word fascist, but then when you go, hitler, you can't -- oh, everybody starts to go -- but what was going on in early '30s germany? basically, you had a destruction of the belief in the free press. you had a blurring between the executive branch and the justice department. you have creating an other, whether it's muslims, whether it's mexicans, whether it's congressmen who weren't born in this country. and then you have the

destruction of free elections. and we're here. and what is the difference between adolpf hitler and donal trump? i'm not saying there's a holocaust, but when you look at the tactics. and that is where we are right now. and as we are heading 39 days from election, this is where we have. and we still have people chanting, okay. and on a personal level, and i for a second want to talk to my jewish friends who are voting for donald trump. how dare you? how dare you, with what our people have gone through in history, and you see a man who is a dictator. and once you give a man absolute power, he is possible of anything. and if you are a jew in this country and you are supporting donald trump, you are not looking back at our history. and you are blind and you are walking like a lemming off a cliff. it is time to wake up. i'm sorry. this is where we are. there is no difference from what donald trump is preaching, from what adolf hitler preached in the early '30s. let's just say it once and for all.

>> yeah. i mean, errin haines, i guess i'd love to get your take on this. i think everybody is looking back wondering if enough was said, if we identified these tendencies quickly enough. and you know, i think there were times that when these issues came up, it was seen as sort of overmodulated, overpoliticized. but right now it seems so plain and clear. and we now have americans following this president, some of them, to their deaths. >> well, mika, to your point, we did see a lot of this from 2016. the president is largely drawing from that same playbook, headed into the final stretch of this general election. i don't think that there really is anybody in this country at this point who doesn't know who

president trump is, which, again, underscores the point that this election is really about, you know, who the country is and where the country is at this point. joe mentioned, you know, if what we're seeing in the country is something that we would want to see our children replicating. i remember the ad right before the 2016 election, the famous hillary clinton ad asking, you know, is this what you want your children to see in a president? four years later, that is still an open question. we saw president trump mocking a journalist four years ago, so that should not also come as a surprise. and so, i think the question really to be asking in these final days is really where the voters are, if they are going to make a different choice or if they are still focused on issues like the supreme court, to the exclusion of other priorities in

this country that a lot of marginalized communities, a lot of women are saying that they are alarmed by in the midst of the dual pandemics of coronavirus and racism, neither of which the president really seems very interested in addressing or responding to. >> mark leibovich, let's talk about joe biden's campaign. i'm hearing some concerns from biden's supporters and also from just reporters suggesting that donald trump's getting a big advantage for a few reasons. one, the trump campaign is canva canvassing door to door, knocking on thousands and thousands and thousands of doors in swing states across america. also, donald trump, of course, holding huge events. joe biden is not going do it because he's not going to put his supporters at risk. but have you heard concerns expressed that joe biden is not doing enough events, that as donald trump picks up the pace of his schedule across swing states, joe biden needs to do more than, you know, basically

stop campaigning by midmorning? >> yeah, you see a lot of that, you hear a lot of that now. it's probably inevitable, but whoever the democratic nominee was, you were probably going to be able to say a sentence in september of 2020 that democrats are concerned about blank, you know, nominee doing this and that. but the fact is, though, joe biden has had an extremely low footprint in a campaign as far as his physical presence in communities, but he is going into places regularly, like pennsylvania and michigan and wisconsin and florida. and what's striking about these events -- and i went to a bunch of them -- or at least i went around a bunch of them -- is they're basically invisible beforehand. no one knows if they're happening. there are no signs outside. there's not a lot of advanced publicity. but afterwards, they'll get a lot of local media. they'll sort of come out of town. there's maybe ten people in audience, all meticulously socially distanced. and yes, it looks very antiseptic, very kind of

impersonal compared to the in-person campaigning that joe biden has been, you know, really -- really has reveled in through his career. but it also sends a message that the campaign believes it is far more powerful and far more effective that they are an extremely responsible alternative to a reckless incumbent who is, you know, as you said, holding these large rallies, is going door to door, is basically proceeding as if there is no pandemic in which people are dying and getting sick every day. so, it's a calculation on one hand, but it's also, they will say over and over again, it is something that they're going to err on the side of public health and safety and responsibility. >> and kasie, one of the concerns is in michigan. ron fortier retweeted an article talking about concerns in the detroit area, especially, that the trump people are going around knocking on doors while there is a feeling on the ground that the biden campaign is largely invisible.

>> right, joe. and they are trying to make a virtue out of this, as leibovich just laid out pretty clearly. but i actually have been reporting on this. we sent a crew out to macomb county, which is, of course, one of the critical battleground places, to look at what the trump campaign was doing. and then i talked to some biden volunteers as well. i think if we show you a little bit of this, it's very easy to get a sense of why some of these democrats are nervous about how this is being handled. let's look at -- i talked to these volunteers about what it's like for them to work for the biden campaign in the pandemic. then after that, i'll show you a little bit of what the republicans are doing. let's start and look at the biden volunteers. what kinds of protocols and rules did they lay out for you to try and figure out how to run an organizing campaign in a pandemic? >> yeah, so, they made very clear to us that we would be just doing phone calls from home, that it's very convenient. you know, we just are able to login to the call center from our laptops, start making calls from home. we just use our cell phones, but

we can login to google voice to keep our numbers private, you know, just for our own safety. and it's, honestly, it's been super easy and super convenient for somebody that is very much an introvert and is kind of afraid to knock on doors. this is something that i absolutely am happy to do. it's easy to do. i enjoy it. i feel good about doing it. i feel safe. so, it's been a really positive experience. >> so, quiet of their own home in grand rapids. then here is some video of the trump campaign volunteers actually knocking on doors in macomb county, michigan. and do we have video of there was an event as well, romney mcdaniel firing up the crowd? not an easy thing to do on zoom. i'm not sure if we have it or not, but suffice to say, the energy is very high in the room. and you know, i mean, there are obviously concerns about this.

we saw those folks there wearing masks as they were going about their business, which seems to be a good thing. here's mcdaniel rallying up the crowd. we have the sound on that? you can see them all gathered together. let's bring it up. okay, don't have the sound on it, unfortunately, but as you can see, they're all gathered together, signs. she's telling them, your future depends on this. so, you know, it's clear that they think -- the biden campaign thinks that they are living their values by doing this this way, but there's a real question about whether that's actually going to work. and joe, i saw your tweets about what ron fournier was talking about and the concern here on the ground in michigan is definitely something we're starting to hear more about. >> well, you look at, for instance, the trump canvassers that went up. what were they doing? they were wearing masks. they knocked on the door. and then they stepped back six feet. look at this. so, i don't think there's a doctor in america that would say

that if they do this and step back six feet and come off of that door ledge, that they are endangering anybody. now, of course, there are people, after i put my tweet out there, that said, don't come to my door. you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic. >> yeah, i'd be nervous. >> that's a choice people can make. and i understand, if they don't want to open their door, they don't want to open their door. when i campaigned and knocked on 10,000 doors, if people didn't come to the door, guess what, i wrote a note. i put something on their doorknob. i left. and even that made a difference, kasie. but there is no doubt, you look at what rhonda mcdaniel's doing. you notice in the sign-ups in the parking lot, everybody was wearing a mask, right? so, the trump volunteers were wearing a mask. they are outside. and it doesn't -- i'm sorry, it doesn't cut it to say, oh, we can't do that outside after we've been watching black lives matters protests, 25 million

people, in masks. and what did we say through the entire process? they're outside, they're wearing masks. it's like reverend al's rally. and they were following protocols and they were being safe. so, kasie, i must say, i don't buy this whole argument that we can't campaign in person safely, because you can. and i understand, they maybe made this decision three or four months ago. well, they're in the home stretch, and making phone calls is awesome. it makes a huge difference to target, identify, and get people out. but there's no substitute to knocking on doors and doing lit drops. >> well, and getting that time with voters to actually have a chance to make your pitch face-to-face. i mean, i think we all know that face-to-face interactions -- and we all miss them very much in the pandemic -- they are oftentimes, and you would know this when you were a candidate,

they're the most effective way to convince somebody to actually take action on your behalf. i think your point is the right one, that these calls were made when the pandemic was in full force. you know, i think there is a lot of fear still among many biden voters who are worried about the pandemic and legitimate, legitimate fear and some questions about how to go about doing this the right way. but you know, i did think -- certainly, what we saw from the trump folks, is that their volunteers are conducting themselves not necessarily the way the president is telling everyone to conduct themselves sometimes when he's talking about how this virus is not a threat. i mean, they clearly are making sure, because -- and i heard from people as well when i've tweeted about this particular topic -- that they don't want a stranger, especially a stranger not in a mask, right up in their space at their door. so, they're trying to strike the right balance. but you know, there's only a few weeks left in this. and you know, i think the other point that you were raising earlier, everyone said to hillary clinton, she didn't go

to wisconsin. what are they going to say to joe biden if something goes wrong here? >> right. >> so, mark leibovich, as you reported out this piece, i'm interested to see what the campaign told you about the availability of joe biden and now, also, of senator kamala harris, to the media, to do interviews, to be out there. part of it is because donald trump is so ubiquitous that it feels like you never see joe biden or kamala harris. but i'm hearing even this week some grumblings about kamala harris, who a lot of people believe is a great asset to the campaign, not being out there more, not talking to the press more often. she does some local interviews when she travels, for sure, and that's an important part of it. but the basement campaign is something that donald trump has gone after joe biden for. is there something to that? and how is the campaign approaching the exposure of both joe biden and kamala harris? >> yeah, i mean, these are two different things in some ways. i mean, one, the exposure as far as visibility doing rallies, having your people go door to door, is kind of a separate kind of voter outreach issue. >> right. >> then the other part of our

outreach is media. and you're right, i mean, joe biden has not done the number of interviews, certainly national, that donald trump has. he did do the cnn town meeting last week that i think most people thought in his campaign was very effective. kamala harris has actually, as you mentioned, become a bit of a flashpoint here. she's been pretty invisible. she has not done the press availability in, really, since she's been picked. and look, it's getting late. i mean, this is her -- she has been the running mate for about half the time that it is between now and the election. and that's become a bit of a mystery. now, the campaign would say that they will do these -- they're just waiting for the right time and the debates will probably move the needle far more than anything they can do in individual media presences. but still, it is becoming an issue, and it's something, certainly, you know, in the parochial world of the press, that we've talked about a lot. >> yeah. hey, so, we have a lot of people in the panel. and donny, i'm just having a chance to get back to you right now. but i just -- you and i often,

and of course, it helps you out in the hamptons, as you say. but -- >> no, i disagree with him. >> that's when you disagree with him. >> and make fun of his short sleeves and stuff. >> but, yes, yes. i want to go back to what you said before. yeah, plooit society doesn't want to make comparisons to hitler. hitler killed 6 million people. hitler started world war ii. hitler was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people. donald trump is not hitler. donald trump is not capable of being hitler because we're in the united states of america, and you look what the federal judiciary's done, you look at what the courts have done. this is, by the way, a debate i've had repeatedly with a lot of people, including mika. but you look at what the judiciary's done, the federal judiciary, even conservatives, members of the federalist society. you look at what members of the press have done, especially in the investigative realm.

you look at what others have done. and yes, i think for the most part, the institutions have held up fairly well. donald trump's own administration now, of course, is run by a lot of lackeys and a son-in-law who's incompetent and over his head and is responsible for many of those 200,000 deaths. but i think it's safe to say that he's moving in the direction of polling. he's moving in the direction of hungary. he's moving in the direction of orbon. he's moving in the direction of law and justice. he's moving into the direction of erdogan. and i think it seems like a radical lurch in america because it is a radical lurch in america, because what he has done so goes against american history. but hitler, no. mussolini, no. i don't think that's even possible in the united states. do you think i'm naive? >> i don't -- i believe in the

good guys, and i in the end don't think it's possible. but i do know as we're heading to an election and we have a president who is literally telling us as autocrats do, as any of those autocrats do, that, basically, come election day, when we know two-thirds of people, democrats who vote by mail and two-thirds of republicans who vote by -- will be voting election day -- that after election night, he's going to invalidate all ballots. and whether he sends marshals in to impound ballots or whether he tells people to take to the streets -- once you have somebody in absolute power, anything is possible. and that's what history has shown us. so, when i'm making that analogy, what i'm saying is, when you have a mad man and then you have all of the tenants -- and once again, our judicial system has helped. but if you start to discredit elections and all of the other things, what history has shown us is that unchecked aggression breeds more aggression. and we have a man who creates an other. we have a man who incites

violence. so, i am stretching a bit, but i've become a student of history, and i am terrified and i am so worried. and my point is, the jews were an other at one point. and trump is now choosing other others, and we just have to look very hard at that. so, am i speaking in hyperbole? i will let the audience decide that. and joe, we have held. and joe, you and i talked offline. we were talking last night. and i do believe the good guys win in the end. i believe that what the democrats have to focus on is health care, that 100,000 people are going to lose their pre-existing conditions, and if they stay focused on that, we will win. and then the democrats will be in power. they will do what needs to be done. but i think what i said needs to be said, and it just comes from my heart. and i was looking earlier on in the show when you were talking, everybody's face was so sad, willie's face, mike's face, mika's face. i've never seen such sadness. and that's the way i feel rights

now. >> well, i think willie was sad because he knew you were going to come on this show with a baby gap muscle shirt that would show way too much of your arms. >> no, that was me who didn't want to see that. >> i think that makes all of us sad, mika. >> and also, the carved-out head over here. >> donny's in one of those fancy upper east side dermatologists, where they don't even take insurance. you just have to hand them a check for the service he's provided. you can tell. >> by the way, i just want to warn people, for old peemg like me who was bearing band due soleil in the '70s and now you get skin cancer yanked out of your head -- >> too much information. >> wow, wow, it's early. thank you. >> okay, from adolph hit letter -- >> van du soleil. >> donny deutsch, way too much information. >> wow! mark leibovich, we would like to give you the final word. >> please. >> can you take us, please, to a

higher level? >> to a higher level. >> to a higher level. um, you know, i probably wore a little ban du soleil in the '80s. >> oh. >> but a highever level is, look, i think we're all soldier forz democracy. i think we will prevail. >> yeah. all right, mark. thank you very much. so, let's look at where we are in terms of the death toll from the coronavirus. and the death toll is climbing. it's way past 200,000 in this country and moving. "the new york times" is out with a gripping series entitled "those we've lost," aimed at putting faces and names to the numbers. among them, itemler amburgey, who began playing hockey at age 7 in the dallas area and by his late teens was a talented defenseman in usa hockey's national player development program. he played for six teams in three professional leagues from 2012

to 2016. amburgey, who retired from hockey in 2016, died on august 29th, at his home in lavon, terrence. the cause was covid-19. over three days in august, he began feeling symptoms, including body aches, nausea, and headaches. covid-19 was detected only after his death. the coach of two youth hockey teams is survived by his wife and daughter. dez-ann romain was a teacher and educator in new york city who set an example for her students through her vibrancy and perseverance. she was the principal at brooklyn democracy academy in the brownsville section of brooklyn. the innovative high school uses small classes and takes in children 16 and older who struggled in a traditional school setting. a child of caribbean immigrants, dez-ann put herself through college by working at a hair

salon. dez-ann died at the age of 36, leaving behind a slew of students who have been forever changed by her for the better. samantha hickey was a gifted nurse from southwestern idaho, a pediatric nurse practitioner that had a zest for solving medical mysteries. she was once able to diagnose a child's disease in one day after the family had searched for a year through multiple medical practitioners. according to one of samantha's trainees, the trick to samantha's diagnostic gift was closely studying what the patient and the family had said. samantha died at the age of 45 from covid-19. she is survived by her husband and four children. house speaker nancy pelosi called lawmakers on the floor yesterday to rise for a somber moment of silence to reflect on the more than 200,000 american lives lost to the virus.

she also led an interfaith service on the national mall where flags have been placed to signify the devastating loss. and now to the economic impact, which is also devastating for so many. while millions of americans struggle with coronavirus-related layoffs, still-employed essential workers are also battling radical pay disparities within their companies. the walt disney company heiress, abigail disney, who took on her grandfather's company last year to criticize its ceo for his, quote, insane $65 million salary, is now among nearly 100 multimillionaires who have called for a covid-19 wealth tax. and abigail joins us now. she is the co-founder of fork films and host of the all ears podcast.

abigail, thank you so much for joining us. >> glad to be here. >> so, your concept -- thank you. tell us about your idea to help deal with the millions of americans that are dealing with economic pain due to this coronavirus, which, of course, leads to mental health problems, depression, so many other issues, and of course, changes their lives and livelihoods, potentially forever. you think that they deserve more. tell us about it. >> yeah. well, i mean, what i think they deserve is dignity. they deserve all the same things that everyone deserves. and i think that for too long, the people in the c-suite have been not really looking upon those low-income workers as equals or peers. so, it's time for there to be a shift in consciousness and a recognition that everybody who works at your company, as i say, whether they fill out the spreadsheets or change the bed sheets, deserves a wage they can

live on. it is not acceptable that someone who works full time cannot regularly feet their family. and that's what's happening at the walt disney company and many other companies. that's happening at mcdonald's, the gap, it's happening everywhere where there's a minimum-wage job. >> well, i couldn't agree with you more. but what do you think at this point millionaires in america should be doing to offset such extreme losses from people who have been affected by the virus? >> yeah, yeah. well, you know, there is talk of a covid surge in terms of philanthropy, and we've certainly been advocating for foundations, which currently are mandated to give out 5% to increase that payout annually to maybe 8%, 10% even, because these are exceptional times, these are exceptional years. but over and above that, we have to advocate for our government to step in for the families that are suffering. this is, you know, trump gave us an unwanted, unnecessary and

incredibly damaging tax cut, so it's time to take some of that money and put it back into the system. when we put money into the hands of actual people on the ground at the beginning of this virus, we saw it all go straight back into the system and stimulate the economy. why we are not doing it right this second, i have no idea. >> hey, abigail, it's willie geist. thanks for being on this morning. for people who don't know, you are the granddaughter of roy disney, whose brother, walt disney, they co-founded disney company together. so, i would just ask you more broadly, has it been a difficult decision for you to step out and speak out so publicly and so bravely and so aggressively about the company that your grandfather founded? >> it's been quite painful to me, honestly, because i really do love that company. i really do believe in the sort of greater good that it represents. but it pains me a lot more to go and talk to folks working full

time who are being treated as poorly as they're being treated. so, it was a hard decision, but i didn't feel like i had a choice. >> and so, as you look at -- the people we interact with, when we go to disney world or disneyland, these are the people you're talking about, people who greet you at the gate, who run the rides, who sell you all the concessions, the people the rest of us see. what would be your message to executives at disney as they think about who to lay off, who to furlough in these times? >> yes. i think that they need to imagine that they're working that job. they're the janitor scraping the gum off the sidewalk. their daughter, you know, is the woman taking and selling sodas and clearing out the trash cans. i think they need to put themselves into those shoes before they make any quick actions. i know that there are workers who are terrified to come back because they have things like asthma and tendency to get bronchitis, and they're worried

to death about catching this virus, and i completely understand that. they have very poor health care. you can get great health care if you work at disney, but only if you qualify, which is a harder thing than it should be. and they are putting people in a terrible position right now. and they've been on furlough for quite a long time. i imagine there are going to be layoffs. and i understand that. the company is really facing a loss of business that's epic. but if there was some way for them to account for the people who have been there and whoven committed themselves and who have been there for the customers and the guests in such an extraordinary way for so many years. they have to account for that in some way. it's loyalty. it's a human quality. >> abigail disney, thank you so much. you make so much sense, and we appreciate your coming on this morning. >> thank you so much. from that now to more on the

economy. next week, potentially, 100,000 airline industry workers will lose their jobs if federal aid is not granted by the deadline of october 1st. airline ceos and union leaders have spent the last two weeks pleading with congress and the white house for an additional $28 billion to keep the industry afloat. that's in addition to the already $32 billion granted to airline companies in march. joining us now, american airlines ceo doug parker and the president of the association of flight attendants, sara nelson. thanks to you both for being on. doug, first of all, just tell us where your airline stands in terms of layoffs that are looming on the way, have already happened, and what you need from the government to perhaps bypass them. >> yeah, well, we at american

have 19,000 employees that will be furloughed on october 1st, if we can't get the payroll support program extended. this was a program put in place with the c.a.r.e.s. act back in march. it's been incredibly successful. the point of the program is to provide funds to keep all of our team members employed, to keep all of the employees in the airlines employed. we agreed in exchange for funds to pay more employees than we need to keep the employees, keep them on our benefits plans, keep them off unemployment and keep the airline industry, therefore, running. so, as the economy rebounds, this essential service that our team provides will continue to be provided. so, everyone agrees that that makes sense. we have complete bipartisan support from the program. we're having trouble getting a -- which is why this is so urgent, because without such a vehicle on october 1st, there are going to be hundreds of thousands of hard-working people who are unemployed. there are going to be service cuts to small markets around the

country. and we don't think that makes any sense. indeed, nor does anyone that we can find in congress. we just can't seem to get congress to act. >> that's less than ten days away. that's next week, 19,000 furloughs at your company, doug. so, when you look at not just the next week but the next year, the next ten years of your company, of the airline industry, what does it look like to you right now? even i think when we get a vaccine and we get past this, people are going to be reluctant in a way to crowd onto airplanes. so, how are you thinking or rethinking the way you run your business? >> well, there's no doubt demand's going to recover slowly. we do believe that, you know, as we will recover, certainly maybe not in the next year, but we don't need a full recovery. we just need, you know, enough time to keep the airlines running well enough to facilitate the economic recovery that is going to occur so, what we need is, again, to have the

ability to keep people employed. once we start having furloughs of pilots and flight attendants, they're not easy to do through training. it will dramatically slow the recovery of the economy. so, again, this isn't about us believing that six months from now, everything's going to be great. we don't. what we know is we need to have this essential service in place to facilitate the recovery, and the only way we can do that is by having this payroll support program. >> buy yourself some time. kasie hunt has a question. kasie? >> sara, i actually want to ask you. part of what's going on here, there are so many americans who are concerned about getting on an airplane. they're worried about their own safety. and obviously, your members and you as flight attendants are dealing with that risk on a daily basis. what concerns are you hearing from flight attendants about how to grapple with this? i realize the jobs are so important, but safety has to be a factor, no?

>> safety is a factor. and of course, i really appreciate "morning joe" spending time on the people that we've lost during coronavirus and keeping the focus on that, because we're still right in the middle of this crisis. and so, when we put this assistance in place to keep everyone in their jobs and keep the airlines running to all of our communities, with the mail ability of those aircraft, delivering essential medicines to veterans and other people, all that infrastructure that's so necessary, we have been on the front line and we have lost flight attendants, and i have paul right behind me, who was a great friend and flight attendant at american airlines who was the first to die. but what the airlines have also done during this time is used this time to put in new cleaning procedures. we, of course, demanded that there were mask policies that were put in place, and we're doing a lot of things to make the traveling public feel more comfortable about flying. the fact of the matter is that while there's community spread and we have restaurants shut down and casinos shut down and

no reason for people to travel anywhere, and businesses stopping all of their business meetings, business travel down 96%, we need to get through this period of time where we are right still in the middle of the crisis and everyone is very, very concerned about it. and so, what we need to do is get six months closer to a vaccine. we need to get closer to a testing regimen with leadership from the white house, hopefully, that will put in place a real federal plan to attack the virus and the real threat here. and that's what this six months will do is it will get us through the middle of this crisis, keep people in their jobs and connected to their health care. it has been the most successful jobs program of all of coronavirus relief. and what's amazing about it is we have overwhelming bipartisan support. no one is against it. everyone is for this program, including the white house. no one wants to see these mass layoffs on october 1st. and so, we just need to get this done now, keep people in their jobs, keep as many people strong as possible, keep our

infrastructure, the airline industry in place, and get through this crisis together. >> all right. errin haines has the next question. errin, jump in. >> thanks, mika. sara, i want to stay with you. as somebody who is -- i am the daughter of a 34-year flight attendant. and so, i certainly am thinking about those, really, essential workers of the airline industry and wondering, with the uncertainty that you mentioned, the lack, really, of a plan from lawmakers around what is coming next, and really, we see the headlines, too, around safety, with passengers on these flights, can you talk to me about what you are hearing from flight attendants about balancing their need to keep their jobs and whether they're going to have a job with safety concerns that they may have for

themselves and their families in the midst of all this? >> well, first of all, thank you so much to your mother. and i want to applaud her for being a part of building up this career that we all enjoy today. so, we are out on the front lines, essential workers going to work. that is exactly what's happening. and we have been dealing with coronavirus since the very beginning, since the end of december. buzz norm because normally, we fly to every corner of the earth, when regular people dream of crossing borders, so we face these things up front. the mask policies, the addition of the hepa filtration, the cleaning procedures that are in place, the very clear instructions through airports and airlines. airports and airlines have been very responsive to our requests for putting in place these policies so everyone understands exactly what's happening in aviation -- a controlled environment, more hand sanitizer everywhe

everywhere. the policies on the airplanes and at the airports are consistent, only because they have worked directly with us to put that in place. we should have a clear plan from the federal government that makes it very clear to everyone what's happening. but what i do want to say is that the airlines have done a really good job at being very clear that if you're not going to wear a mask, you're not going to wear it right, you're not going to listen to these instructions, you're not going to fly with us. and so, we have to have the spirit of we're all in it together and have these policies in place to make this work. and your mother, yes, is putting her life on the line when she's coming to work to do this essential service. and what we're saying to lawmakers is you need to now take care of these essential workers who have kept our industry going and have been on the front lines of demanding safety procedures so we can keep people safe at work. >> all right, president of the association of flight attendants, sara nelson, and american airlines ceo doug parker, thank you both for coming on this morning. and our next guest says that

donald trump has turned the presidency into a business. we'll take a look at how, ahead on "morning joe." we'll be right back. ♪ ♪ this is the feeling of total protection

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our next guest reports donald trump's business has raked in $1.3 billion in revenue during his first four years in office. joining us, dan alexander, the author of "white house, incorporated:how donald trump turned the white house into a business." i've seen in forbes about ivanka's business making money, all sorts of trump businesses making money. i thought that was not allowed. >> well, it is allowed. and there's a loophole that allows you to do it, and the trump family has basically exploited those loopholes and opened up their businesses to be the sort of one-of-a-kind marketplace where anyone, anywhere can pay the president of the united states by, for example, renting space in his office buildings or buying

condos from him that he's constantly selling off. when you add up all that money that's been going in from 2017 to 2019, it gets to an incredible number of $1.9 billion. >> and where does that money go? how is it being used? >> it's being used in the business. we estimate $147 billion turns into operating profits. of that, some is being used to pay down debt, other is being used to reinvest in the business. some of it flows into donald trump's pocket. those are the total business revenues. from there you break down, where is that money coming from? how much turns into profit? how much ends up with trump? it's one big math equation to figure out where the funds are flowing. >> dan, it's willie. the president said -- he was not president, days before he took office in january 2017, that he was turning over complete and

total control of his businesses to don jr. and eric trump. that doesn't represent divesting from the business. that's not even putting it in a trust or blind trust. what did that mean as a practical question? did he actually turn over control? did he divest in some way? >> well, he did not divest. and, of course, if you're in your mid-70s and picked up other interest along the way, it's not unusual for you to then hand the keys over to your kids and say, hey, you take care of the day-to-day operations. what's really important is who owns the business, who's actually getting the money. donald trump kept the ownership of the companies, even though the kids started running things. there's even some question about how much the kids were talking with their father about the business. you know, before he took office, donald trump said, i'm not going to talk with him at all about it. just a couple weeks after that, i was sitting inside trump tower with eric trump and i asked him about that. and he said, well, yeah, you

know, i plan to talk with my dad about profitability reports and that sort of thing. there have been indications that things trump has said since he's been in office that suggest he's got a more active role than he let on at first. >> what does your reporting tell you about president trump's business ties to russia? coming out of the mueller investigation, we heard this from andrew weissmann, from mueller's team, that they didn't go deeper. when asked about the poisoning of navalny, and he can't confront vladimir putin about that, that something else must be going on that people haven't got their arms around. what did you find about his business ties to russia? >> well, what we already know is that there are tremendous business ties there. and that donald trump has been very motivated for a very long time to try to build a tower in russia. i mean, because the story moved kind of slowly, i think sometimes we lose perspective on the fact that during the 2016

campaign, donald trump was actively and secretly pursuing a business deal. in fact, multiple, potential deals, in moscow, that would have required approvals from folks in the government in moscow. so, this is not a hypothetical thing. oh, there must be something missing. we know what he was trying to do. he was trying to pursue business there to make millions of dollars from it. there's no question to me that there would be a huge appetite for trump if he were to come back into the business world after he leaves the presidency. and, you know, within just a couple of months and say, hey, i want to build a tower. guess what, if he wants to build a tower, again, he'll require approval from russian government officials. >> the new book is "white house, incorporated: how donald trump turned the white house into a business".

still ahead, the president promotes violence and bigotry at another one of his super-spreader campaign events. bragging that it's, quote, dangerous for people to protest at his rallies and suggesting that congresswoman omar isn't american. omar isn't american ...and new adventures. you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past... they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. let's help protect them together. because missing menb vaccination could mean missing out on a whole lot more. ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination.

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whenever there was a problem, there would be a little argument or some kind of

anti-trump person, you don't see that much. you don't want to bring it on, but you don't see it much anymore. you know why? it's dangerous. it's dangerous. >> another trump campaign rally where the president celebrates violence and goes down an ugly road on a number of levels. >> it was really something last night. >> and it was a super-spreader event. >> it was a super-spreader event, but that's what he does. people obviously like to go out and risk their lives. that's, of course, their choice. it's a free country. willie, of course, we're going to be showing some clips where the president makes comments that -- we won't call them fascist comments and won't say that it's -- >> look at these people squashed together. >> -- not what autocrats do but it is what autocrats do when you're once again glorifying violence. as the president has once again celebrated the fact that people can get hurt in their rally if

they exercise their first amendment rights. and, of course, later on in the rally the president basically said a member of congress was not an american. how is her country doing? why is she telling us what to do in our country? i'm sorry, if that's not what fascists do, i would love for a professor or somebody who studies fascism to let us know if that is not the practice of fascist leaders. and donald trump may not be trying to imitate them and whipping his crowds into a frenzy. >> we're going to walk through those clips but rarely do you see bigotry so explicit in that moment when donald trump was talking about a sitting member of congress who came to america as a refugee as a child. we'll get into that. mika touched on the pictures we

saw. totally flaunting all of the guidance from the cdc, all of the guidance from his own doctors about distancing, about masks. there are a handful of masks in there. obviously the people behind him had masks on, as they've done before at these events. >> not all of them. >> as you say, glorifying violence, celebrating injuries suffered by a colleague of ours, a reporter, who was shot in the knee with rubber bullets. again, celebrating that, drawing large cheers from the crowd. he's created this culture where those kind of things, using bigotry against a sitting member of congress, not wearing masks are all celebrated at these rallies. this is an issue, obviously, regardless of whether donald trump wins our loses this fall, this is a country that we have to look at and wonder how 40, 45%, 46% of americans cheer and

laugh and celebrate when a member of the press gets hurt, or anybody gets hurt. actually, it's not just members of the press. he's long talked about beating up people or carrying people out on stretchers at rallies who, again, exercise the first amendment rights that hamilton and madison and washington and soldiers and sailors and marines have fought for for 240 years. and he's up there talking about a strong man from south america, mocking outsiders, suggesting again that a refugee that came to america to live the american dream, and then became a member of the united states congress, is not an american.

she shouldn't tell us what to do with our country. just again underlining this before he starts. i know he throws a lot of things at the wall all the time but, again, that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop every day and call fascism, fascism. again, you don't think this is fascist. if you don't think this is how autocrats try to whip crowds into a frenzy, let us know. i mean, maybe we'll have a discussion about it on the show. but it certainly is, what i've read throughout my life, certainly does look that way from here. looks that way to many americans. >> he's making all these people sick. along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle, msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus" john heilemann, and

politics editor at the grio and msnbc political contributor, jason johnson joins us. and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early" with kasie d.c., kasie hunt. >> so, john heilemann, let me just ask you, are we being hyperbolic here, a president talking about violence, celebrating the fact that if somebody dissented, it would be dangerous for them, and laughing and drawing cheers, drawing cheers for a shooting of the member of the free press, which is where he was supposed to be legally but gets shot by a rubber bullet, and the cheering that he was in extreme hang and misery, and also declaring a refugee that came to this country was somehow not a member of this country. let's listen to this byte where

the president basically says that a member of congress is not a member of our country because she's not white. >> you know, not a good student, not good at anything, but she's got a good line of crap, i'll tell you that. she's got a hell of a lung and she's got -- you know, she's radical left but she's not as bad as some of them. how about omar of minnesota. we're going to win the state of minnesota because of her, they say. she's told us how to run our country. how did you do where you came from? how is your country doing? she's going to tell us -- she's telling us how to run our country. >> she's telling us how to run our country, as if it's not her country because, like donald

trump's mother and like donald trump's grandparents, she was an immigrant to the united states of america. john heilemann, before we get to the top of the new, tell me if it's hyperbole or if this is not what fascist leaders have done throughout the decades? >> not hyperbole. good morning, joe. good morning, mika. good morning, willie, and everybody else. not hyperbole. you know, i -- i think all of us -- the sad part about this is it not only is not hyperbolic, this is not the first time. the whole reason why i think we all -- all of us who were reluctant to use this kind of language even after seeing donald trump do a lot of disturbing things in the 2016 campaign, i speak for myself, and i think for a lot of other people, you didn't want to go --

to leap to notions of fascism, to the kind of language that not only seems hyperbolic, seems unavoidable. there are all these other labels, xenophobic, racist, demagoguic, all of those things are things we're reluctant to apply to any politician, but trump has been so consistently all of those things, racist, sexist, xenophobic, autocratic, and fascistic for so long now that even everyone who has resisted that language, it's not that you apply it reluctantly, you apply it because there are no other words. and he's done it so often. just with these women, just with the women he's citing here, with aoc, can congresswoman omar, with congresswoman talib, the squad he's chosen to demonize from the moment these women got

elected. this is not the first time he's done it with them. they are some of his favorites. joe, to your point at the top, the thing that's so disturbing about the entire thing is not that donald trump is a fascist and not that donald trump is an aspiring autocrat, but is that the response to all of that is only gotten more intensity positive in his crowd. and whether donald trump wins or loses this fall, those people and those views they cheer and they embrace in donald trump, that slice of the electorate will still be here, and that's why i keep saying over and over again, the man is dangerous, but he's a symptom, not a cause. next, an update on a new jump in coronavirus cases as president trump revels in packed crowds of supporters, standing shoulder to shoulder for hours. >> without masks. >> you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back you're watc joe. we'll be right bac ♪

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new cases and positivity rates of coronavirus are continuing to rise at concerning rates. "the washington post" analyzed public health data found 27 states aincrease in the seven-day average of new confirmed cases since the final week of august. minnesota, montana, oklahoma, puerto rico, wisconsin, wyoming and utah set record highs monday for their seven-day averages. before president trump held that rally at the pittsburgh international airport last night in front of a densely packed crowd, as you can see in this photograph, the president said this at the white house. >> why haven't you said anything about the u.s. hitting 200,000 deaths? >> go ahead. >> the grim milestone today of 200,000 deaths to the virus, what do you want to say to the american people? >> well, i think it's a shame. if we didn't do it properly and

do it right, you'd have 2.5 million deaths. if you take a look at alternatives, you could have 2.5 million deaths or something thereabouts. you could have a number that could be substantially more, but it's a horrible thing. should have never, ever happened. china let this happen. just remember that. >> so, mike barnicle, the president saying, quote, it's a shame. china should have never let this happen, creating a number 2.5 million, pulling that number out of thin air and comparing it to the 202,000 deaths, saying in comparison to that, it's not so bad. the president is doing more than always wanting to play it down, as you told bob woodward, he's ignoring it, literally in the situation of that first case, what he would say to the 200,000 families who are suffering right now. >> whatfault? i choked? i didn't do my job? he's not going to say any of that, willie.

i have to tell you, the last 20 minutes of this conversation is both enlightening and depressing at the same time. but it's a conversation i think the nation has to have going on until november and maybe even beyond. it is the realization that everything we heard this morning, every snippet we heard from donald j. trump, the president of the united states, is further indication and proof that he has changed our country. he has changed our country for the worst. if it's irreparably changed, we'll find out as time has gone on. everything he has touched, everything he has spoken about has altered reality. it's not just the 200,000 deaths. he has managed to take the fact that more than 200,000 people are dead from a virus he didn't know how to wage war against and knocked it down in terms of people's focus because he talks

about the supreme court, he talks about congresswoman omar from minnesota. he talks about things like that to get people off the track and sometimes we follow him off the track. in addition to the 200,000 deaths, there are millions, millions of people today, families today, fractured economically because the united states congress, specifically the republicans in the united states senate will not bail them out when they're drowning economically right in front of them. so the country has, indeed, changed. whether it's unalterably changed, we'll find out, but it sure is depressing. coming up, new election models are sizing up the probabilities of democrats winning the senate and keeping control of the house. we'll break down the numbers straight ahead on "morning joe."

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♪ if you look at the polls now, kasie, it doesn't look like it's working now, and yet the president's doubling down. he's tripling down on this sort

of logic -- on this sort of campaigning that appeals, we still believe, to a minority of the country, to maybe 40% of the country, 41% of the country, 42% of the country. i will say, yes, as early as december 2015, i was asking if this is what nazi germany -- or germany looked like in 1923 before the rise of hitler, but at the same time i never imagined that my republican party, never imagined that my republican party would fall in line behind a man like this who continues to use fascist language, and yet there they are, silent, no protest, going along for the ride. >> i've lost count on the number of times and the number much issues and the number of comments that i have asked republican senators on the hill

about. it feels like it's something new every day and the reaction is almost always the same with a handful of exceptions. the one thing i will say, and i'm with mike in terms of it feeling depressing, but there are a couple things. let's remember hillary clinton did, in fact, win the popular vote. there were more people that voted for her than voted for donald trump. that says there are americans who saw what trump did the said, saw that language and said, this is not for me. the second thing is when mitt romney lost michigan in 2012, he did it with more votes than the votes that donald trump got in michigan and he won in michigan, which also tells me, there are a lot of republicans out there that also don't like this language, that reject it, a lot of republican voters. i do think the most important

thing for americans today, if this is not the country they want, if living in this is not what they want, then the majority of those people should actually show up to the polls. it's going to be harder than ever because of the pandemic, because of the coronavirus. we're all covering the issues related to ballots and making sure you're safe as you go out and do that. but while republicans like to talk about the silent majority, i think there is a majority majority, and when i go out into the country and we haven't been able to do that this much because of the pandemic, but there are good people across this country who maybe they have disagreements, but at the end of the day they don't like this rhetoric. that's what you hear even for people that voted for trump, what is giving you pause? they say the tweets, is usually how they put it, but what that means is they don't like this divisive, chaotic language. the reality is one way people have to express this is on election day. >> we saw it hasn't worked,

mika. didn't work in wisconsin when donald trump went to kenosha, tried to gin up the base by making it what he called the law and order sorted of tour around kenosha and wisconsin, but his law of order was celebrating a teenager running through the streets shooting people with an ar-15. the people in wisconsin, if you believe the polls, they disagreed. coming up, dr. al gross, the candidate aiming to unseat republican senator dan sullivan of alaska, will join the conversation. "morning joe" is back in a moment. ng joe" is back in a moment

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now is really what led me to this decision, as so many other people in the country, i'm watching what's going on and i'm deeply concerned. joe biden represents to me the kinds of values and integrity

and courage that we want in a president and someone who has, i think, would have my back as a citizen and lives in the neighborhood and has a family and all the other things people do. i want to feel like my president cares about me and cares about this country and joe biden does. i've known joe for over 40 years, and i know the kind of man that he is. and i'm so deeply honored to be a part of this. and i look forward to talking to people about who he is and what he stands for and the kind of courage he has exemplified during the years. >> that is cindy mccain, the widow of the late republican senator john mccain on the "today" show earlier today explaining her support for joe biden for president. biden told donors last night that mccain's endorsement was coming, quote, because of what trump talks about how my son and john and others who are heroes

who serve the country, he says they are losers, suckers. biden was referring to comments president trump made about mocking the war dead. biden tweeted about the endorsement last night writing, cindy, i'm deeply honored to have your support and friendship. this requires all of us to come together as one america to restore the soul of the nation together. we will get it done. this morning president trump responded to the endorsement on twitter with some unkind words we will spare you. mika? >> that would be helpful. pull that down. now to an election model from the economist which is giving democrats a 98% chance of holding onto the house of representatives and a 65% chance of winning the senate. joining us now is the data editor for the economist, dan

rosenheck. tell us how you were able to compile the numbers in terms of understanding the effecttivity here. >> senate races are great for statistical modelers compared to presidential races because there's so much data. you can go back decades and no more than 30 races a year. the model i built uses a combination of sort of fundamental factors like how states have voted in the past and who's the incumbent with the latest polling data. and it finds that although the democrats have an uphill battle, they need to net three seats plus the vice president seat to take over the chamber. the playing field is so wide. there are so many different seats where maybe the democrats are behind but are they live to catch up and pull off an upset that the republicans are defending too much territory all at once. we don't know where the dam is going to leak, but we think it's more likely than not to leak somewhere so these election models tell you what about the

presidential election? >> we do have a presidential forecast model. it shows joe biden as a heavier favorite to show joe biden to win the presidency. it has him in the 80s, 85%, 86%. it's always worth remembering that 85% is not 100, and one in seven events happen all the time, but you would certainly much rather be joe biden than donald trump at this point in the presidential race. >> kasie hunt with the next question. kasie? >> good morning. you mentioned your senate model looks at some of these places, you're not sure where the dam might break. are there any other factors you're looking at or things driving this model? are it women voters in iowa? is montana something on your radar? do you have any more granular detail this model provides? >> absolutely. the democrats currently lead in just enough seats to get to a

50-50 tie, assuming they win in arizona, north carolina, maine and colorado, but lose alabama. that is a pretty tenuous position. but i think probably the biggest surprise of how this senate campaign has aspired is what the polls show, the polls in september that seemed like longshots for democrats not long ago. just this week, selzer published a poll in iowa which showed theresa greenfield challenging joni ernst up three. steve bullock is trailing by just a point. you have surprising polling results out of some southern states where not only is the democrat leading in north carolina but lindsey graham appears to be in the fight of his life in south carolina. the model did not originally expect six months ago that this many races in republican-held

seats would be this competitive, but enough respondents to surveys are saying, a, they are going to vote for a democrat and, b, they might split their ticket and vote for trump for a president but democrat for senate that the model says, oops, the facts changed. it's time for me to change my mind. >> dan, as democrats wake up and look at your new numbers, they say, that's good, 65% chance of taking back the senate but they say to themselves, there are six weeks between now and election day and a lot can change in that time. in your experience, how much do these numbers fluctuate? could they go down 60% in the next few day, for example? >> the next few day, probably not. the next few days it would require a lot to move the polls at the national and state level vastly toward the republicans. but, sure, there is plenty of time left.

67% is a fairly narrow advantage. it wouldn't be surprising to me at all if it wound up favoring the republicans by election day just because most of these contests are in seats that lean to the right. but it is also possible that it could move in the democrats' direction. it all depends on the fund-raising support and it depends on what people continue to tell pollsters. >> dan rosenheck, thank you very much. very, very fascinating numbers here. joining us is the challenging incumbent dan sullivan in alaska, dr. al gross. thanks for being on the show. how are you hoping to flip it and what are you hearing from voters out there that gives you hope it might be possible? >> good morning from all the way up in alaska. it's a pleasure to be on your show. alaska is a very, very

independent state. it's not a red state like many people believe. dan sullivan has failed on the economy here in alaska. we've been in recession and crushed by the covid disaster and alaska has been failing for the past six years. i've got an economic plan. dan sullivan doesn't. that's how i'm going to win. >> go ahead, willie. >> i was going to ask -- >> and we lost willie's line, so i shall take it. i want to hear what you said that alaskans have been crushed by the covid crisis. can you explain what's going on there? >> yeah, sure. we've been in a recession for five or six years leading up to covid. we had a complete loss of tourism industry here in the state. our small businesses are failing and the oil industry crashed at the same time and the demand for oil continues to remain low. these are the economic drivers here in the state. and it doesn't look like they're

going to be recovering any time soon with the status quo. >> let's go to kasie hunt for the next question. kasie? >> dr. gross, good morning. a couple quick things. first of all, you're an independent although you'll be listed as a democrat on the ballot. do you plan to caucus with the democrats in the senate if you're elected? >> i do plan to caucus with the democrats if i win, absolutely. the republicans have failed completely on the health care when they had the presidency, house and senate. i plan to be the doctor that helps get the public option across the finish line. i stand up for women's rights and for keeping government out of people's personal lives and i'm acutely aware of climate change because i live here in alaska. so, yes, i will caucus with the democrats. >> to follow up on that, we're facing a pretty intense supreme court battle here and democrats are already talking about potentially retaliating for that. so, will you support expanding

the supreme court if democrats win the senate and they try to do that? >> i do not support stacking the court, absolutely not, but i believe the republicans have been dishonest and showed lack of integrity when four years ago they stressed the importance of waiting for after the election to bring in a new supreme court justice. and dan sullivan, my opponent, is on record saying just that. he lacks integrity and is dishonest to the american people. >> willie? >> i thought willie was going -- i'm sorry. >> i think we've recovered my audio, kasie. thank you. dr. gross, as i said earlier, i was looking down your resume. commercial fisherman from alaska. you once had to shoot a grizzly bear when confronted. is that a true story? >> e on, my. >> that's a very true story. i came within a split second of

being mauled by a grizzly bear. i turned around and it was literally three or four feet behind me. it was one of the scariest moments of my life. unfortunately, i had no choice but to kill that bear. it was a bad actor. i've been around a lot of brown bear, grizzly bears, in my life but this one wouldn't give up. >> so your alaska cred is intact with that story. i want to ask you what's going on with covid-19 in the state of lass r alaska. how bad has the problem been and how would you classify the federal government's response to it, specifically that of the white house? >> i think we've had an absolute failure of leadership in the white house with the lack of preparation, the lack of appropriate testing, and ppe preparation, and defunding of our public health system leading up to this. here in alaska, we were able to shut the state down relatively early because we're like an

island with portables of entry into the state but economic pressure led our governor open up the state and covid has spiked and we expect it to spike through the fall here. >> what about economically as you look at the fallout from covid-19. obviously it's a health crisis but it's ma tgrown into a big -w would you approach the economic crisis in front of us? >>. >> well, i think it's two-tiered. people need health insurance and the security of going back to work. in order to get people back to work, there needs to be an mechanism for them to be covered for their health concerns. i strongly believe a public option getting health coverage away from it being insurance-based is a big first step, a strong believer in government infrastructure

projects to get people back to work because some of these businesses, like these tourism businesses, are not going to be fully operational until well past next summer. i don't believe the cruise industry is going to recover until after next summer, so we need alternative ways of getting people back to work, expanding internet as kro the state is one infrastructure project and there are clean energy projects potentially developable up here in the state as well. >> dr. al gross, independent candidate for senate in alaska. thank you very much for being on "morning joe." >> thank you so much. colleges and universities -- great to have you. colleges and universities that reopened for in-person classes may have caused tens of thousands of additional cases of covid-19 in recent weeks. conducted to a new study conducted by researchers at the university of north carolina at greensboro, indiana university, the university of washington and

davidson college. "the wall street journal" reports that according to the study, researchers estimate an extra 3,200 cases a day occurred in the u.s. that likely wouldn't have happened had schools kept classes online. the manuscript has yet to be peer-reviewed to determine whether college reopenings influenced case counts in the larger community. the researchers used cell phone gps tracking data to look at the movements of people and calculated the infection rates of the surrounding county from mid-july to mid-september before and after students showed up. we'll be following those numbers. and trick or treat probably won't have the same ring to it over zoom. what are we going to do over halloween? the cdc released its recommendations for halloween yesterday and the biggest one is to avoid trick-or-treating.

the agency offered alternative ideas ranked from low risk to high risk to keep the spirit of the holiday alive. the ideas include stay-at-home pumpkin carvings or a socially distant outdoor scary movie watch party with friends. they also suggested prepacking sanitized goody bags and leaving them at the edge of your lawn. or you can do what this arizona dad did, constructing a halloween candy chute for contactless halloween trick-or-treating. this is innovative. >> i like it. >> the cdc also pointed out that costume masks do not have the same protective power as normal masks and keep a greater social distance. they want you to do that, especially since screaming has the potential to spread the virus. i mean, willie, i -- i already have my costume ready to go. >> you do?

>> i was really excited. >> can you reveal or not? >> yes. >> yes. joe's is unbelievable. you can't even -- he's been working on it. he's got construction and stuff like that. what are your kids going to do? have you discussed? >> we haven't gotten there yet. airs obviously much bigger problems with coronavirus and we haven't discussed them. there are moments for kids where it's the little league season canceled, now the flag football season canceled, and many schools put online and then hit them with halloween. these things accumulate and add up. i think, kasie, we can agree that congressional funding now for a candy chute on every doorstep in this country, that is awesome. >> my neighborhood listserv is abuzz with plans for safe trick-or-treating. i would have been devastated not to trick or treat. i would have been beside myself. i feel for all the little kids.

we are trying to decide what mars should be for halloween. he thinks end he should be a candy bar not a mars bar. >> it's fun when they're that age because you have 100% say in what the costume is. mars can't talk back. >> i think neighborhoods can figure this out and get -- toss the candy or put it in a bowl. they've got to have it. you can organize it with your neighborhood. i think there has to be one rule, and that is, no talking politics between the parents. then we will all have a good halloween. there you go. ahead, we'll talk to florida congressional candidate whose race could be key in blocking one potential doomsday election scenario for democrats. keep it right here on "morning joe." on "morning joe. when you have depression, it can plunge you into deep, dark lows.

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the different positions i've had taught me how to be there for others. ♪ i started out as a cashier. i mean, the sky's the limit with walmart. it's all up to you. ♪ ♪ last week you spoke about regrets, the birther stuff. do you regret that? >> i said regret and, you know, i'm on to it but i'd like to make everybody happy frankly. a lot of people like the fact i speak my mind. maybe that's why i'm doing well in the polls and why i'm here. a lot of people like the fact that i speak my mind. >> all right. that was our next guest speaking with donald trump back in 2016. joining us now, peabody award-winning television investigative journalist and now

the democratic nominee for congress in florida's 15th district, alan cohn. we worked together years ago back in connecticut. and also long-time media executive editor in large at "newsweek" and cnbc founder and contributor tom rogers. tom, before we get to alan, you laid out a doomsday scenario that he could be a part of. can you give us a thumbnail of that? >> thanks for having me this morning. this whole strategy, and it is a strategy, to delegit mize the mail-in ballots is not just about donald trump saying the election is rigged and there's a coherent strategy and he let it out of the bag last week. he said at a certain time this goes to congress. and what that means is there is

a real strategy here, not simply to try to overturn the popular vote by winning in the electoral college, but to overturn the electoral college vote by throwing it into congress. and there are a lot of byzantine paths that are involved here in terms of how that happens. but the fact of the matter is all nine swing states have republican state legislatures. and if they delegitimatize the mail-in ballots and no matter what we know the margin for joe biden in every swing state will be because of mail-in ballots just because of the volume of them, they could create a situation where those republican state legislatures send in competing electoral college slates to try to throw it into congress' lap as to what is the legitimate electoral college slate. if that can't be resolved by the house and the senate and if the democrats can't take the senate, it won't be, then the entire

election could be thrown into the house. and when the election happens in the house, it's not by majority vote, it's by state delegation vote with each state getting one vote based on the number of republicans or democrats in their delegation. and right now donald trump would win that vote. the democrats have to flip four states, florida, pennsylvania, michigan, alaska and montana are the five possible ones of which four must be flipped. within that, alan cohn's race in florida, the florida 15, is the best chance they have to flip the florida delegation if it comes down this path and it could welcome down this path. >> so, alan, let's turn to your race now. how's it going? what are you hearing from voters? what are the polls telling you? and why did you decide to run? >> well, i decided to run because as you mentioned over 30 years i've been an investigative reporter shining the light on public corruption.

i exposed one of the biggest cases of public corruption in the tampa bay area several years ago and people know me and trust me and they are understandably cynical about politics as usual and politicians. and because of that, they're attracted to this campaign. look, this is a district now that is solidly one-third democrat, one-third republican, one-third independent. it is a moderate district full of middle class and working families who have been suffering from the chaos over the last four years, and now during this pandemic there are so many people who are out of work, who are underemployed, who have gotten sick. over 13,000 floridians have died from covid-19 and they want the chaos to end. so the polls show us when people learn about my background, especially as an investigative journalist, we do very well in the polling and the presidential race is tied. you know, there is an expression that democrats can't win the

white house without winning florida, and you can't win florida without winning the i-4 corridor. this congressional district is the i-4 corridor from the tampa suburbs to the orlando suburbs. this is where, you know, the election will be decided. that's why it's important for the nation to focus on this race. >> kasie hunt. >> alan, it's kasie. to follow up on that i-4 question, what are you hearing specifically from seniors? because we've seen some polling that shows biden has pulled ahead with them. is that something that's bearing out in your campaigning conversations? >> absolutely. and incredibly, my opponent, my republican opponent has called for the ending of social security and putting it into the stock market. and a vast majority of our voters in this congressional district are 65 and older, and they are barely making it now. so social security and medicare,

they are huge issues here. >> tom rogers, i'm going to go back to your piece. you've been doing so much thinking about how this election will play out, how the days and weeks after election day will play out. as you know, donald trump has already signalled that he will view the election as illegitimate if there's not an election winner declared on election night. so we know that mail-in ballots in some states aren't even counted beginning until election day, so inevitably this count will go on for days, perhaps weeks after that. so what do you expect to see in that period from election night forward for the next couple of weeks? what will that look like in this country? >> well, i think the effort to delegitimize the mail-in ballots will be a full-court press by the republicans. there will be court cases and in all likelihood you'll see a new supreme court passing judgment on one issue or another.

but there is a clear path here that would involve trying to make sure that the justification for putting up another slate of electoral college delegates from these states, electoral college voters, so that the election is contested up until december 8th, which is when states are supposed to resolve these issues. and we see competing slates being put forward where joe biden has legitimately won, but the republicans are trying to overturn the electoral victory he had in those states by putting up a competing slate. once that lands in congress' lap, it has got its own set of processes and procedures which are followed under a very old statute enacted in 1887 and the 12th amendment to the

constitution totally new ground for how an election may be decided. we're going to see a lot of effort to drive a resolution for that path. this is really scary. this isn't hypothetical. this isn't maybe they're going to try this. it is very clear with what donald trump said last week, this is the game plan. alan cohn has to win his seat and we need to win at least three other seats in four other states in order to stop this. so if it goes into the house of representatives, the democrats can have a final backstop there. >> all right, tom rogers and alan cohn, thank you both. alan, good luck with your race. great to see you again. >> thank you, mika. >> before we close, i wanted to get some analysis from kasie hunt. we haven't talked too much about the scotus issue today, but mitt romney making news, standing by the president's choice, whoever it may be. the president making that

announcement, i believe, this saturday at 5:00 p.m.? >> that's what we're hearing, mika. yeah, there are a lot of people who watched what mitt romney did with impeachment and were disappointed that he made a decision here to go along with president trump. but the reality is part of the reason why republicans have been gritting their teeth and putting up with so many things the president has said is for moments that are exactly like this one so that they will get their nominees on the supreme court. and mitt romney ran as a social conservative in 2012. he signed on to a brief to overturn roe versus wade. so in many ways this shouldn't be a surprise. >> yeah, i don't think kasie or anybody who watches capitol hill closely was terribly surprised that mitt romney would consider the nominee. a lot of those who have said yes, we want to open the process have also said we will vote depending on how we view the nomination. it's not a guarantee of the vote but you'd be surprised if they voted against donald trump's

nominee. one last note, we learned tomorrow, mika, president trump will visit the supreme court to pay his respect to the late justice ruth bader ginsburg. >> all right, that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there, i'm stephanie ruhle. it's wednesday, september 23rd, and this morning we are honoring the life of supreme court justice ruth bader ginsburg. in just about 30 minutes from now, her body will be brought to the supreme court where she worked for the last 27 years of her extraordinary life. a private ceremony will be held and then her casket will be brought to the top of the court steps where the public will be allowed to pay their respects. of course all of this is happening at the very same time president trump and republicans are pushing ahead with confirming ginsburg's replacement. president trump says he will make the nomination official this saturday. we're covering all the angles of