a lot of people waiting on reli relief. thank you for getting up way too early with us this morning. stick around, "morning joe" starts now. remember when donald trump received the endorsement of former klan leader david duke and then lied about knowing who he was. >> i don't know anything about david duke. i don't know what you're talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. >> remember when donald trump retweeted a far right anti-islamic group and then said this? >> you're telling me about these people. i know nothing about these people. >> you'll never know what he's saying about the proud boys, a white supremacist group who he told in front of a national audience to stand back and stand by. >> i don't know who the proud

boys are. you have to give me a definition because i don't know who they are. >> whatever. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, october 1st, along with joe willie and me, we have professor, eddie glaude jr. and editor at the financial times, ed luce. >> it's so interesting, isn't it, that he's saying the same thing now that -- >> here he goes again. . >> that he said as we've been talking about for four years, as he said before super tuesday in 2016. i don't know who david duke is. and, of course, back in 2000, there are quotes of him attacking david duke and saying he wouldn't be a reformed party candidate because david duke was a racist and didn't want to be in that party. and then he was slibry about the klan, i can't attack this group

because i don't know what they're doing. here he goes doing the same thing again. >> he gave them a very clear message to stand back and stand by. and you can see him thinking, willie, in that debate how do i do this, how do i do this? because both chris wallace and joe biden were like, go ahead, denounce. say it. do it. do it. he thought, how am i going to do it? and he didn't do it. >> he didn't do it. the semantic game people were saying, he meant to say stand down. or what the president is saying now, i don't know who the proud boys are. the question is will you condemn white supremacists, and instead of saying of course i will, he said which ones. he wanted to get specific which ones. and yesterday the president when asked about proud boys. >> mr. president, can you say what you meant last night when you said the proud boys should

stand back and stand by. >> i don't know who the proud boys are. you have to give me a definition because i don't know who they are. >> mr. president did you misspeak when you said stand by? that's my first question. >> look, law enforcement will do their work. they're going to stand down. they have to stand down. >> white supremacists, they clearly love you and support you. do you welcome that? >> i want law and order to be a very important part -- it's a very important part of my campaign. when i say that, what i'm talking about is law enforcement has to -- police has to take care -- >> i'm talking about white supremacist. >> i just told you. >> do you denounce them? >> i've always denied -- >> of white supremacy? >> any form of any of that you have to denounce. but i also -- joe biden has to say something about antifa. >> so he cannot just bring himself to say, when he's first asked about white supremacists, will you denounce them?

gets to it eventually but first gives his speech. sb again and again, for the last four years this has been his answer, i don't know those people who i gave an endorsement to or i'm going to change the subject because i know they support me and i can't risk losing them. >> you know what he didn't do in that clip and what he can't do is say do -- when asked, do you condemn white supremacy, he will never say, yes. i'm against all of the violence on all -- do you -- and as far as the white boys go -- the proud boys go, he knows who they are. the fbi is out once again saying white supremacy is one of the greatest dangers in america right now, as far as domestic

terrorism goes. but this happens eddie, time and time again. will you condemn white supremacy? he will never say yes, i condemn white supremacy. this is not a semantics game, it's four years, whether it's refusing to condemn david duke, the klan, coming back saying something was wrong with my earpiece, yesterday trying to clarify things but would not clarify it. he was asked several times, do you condemn white supremacy? it's always generalized, he tries to change the subject. he goes to antifa or some left wing groups that are -- he wants to condemn. yesterday he talked about law enforcement, but will not come out and condemn white supremacist groups.

>> yes, joe, and it seems to me there's a reason why he won't condemn them. it's something we need to say outloud. donald trump will not condemn white supremacists because he is one. we can make that judgment not to rush to it. we can look at his policies, at his behavior. it's not simply david duke, joe. it's qanon, the klan, every time he has an opportunity to declare that these people are outside of the democratic process, they should be condemned in an unqualified way, he dances, he skirts. and it has everything to do with, i believe, his alignment with these folks. the proud boys proudly call themselves western schachauvins. they are prowhite. it aligns with spencer.

when you think how donald trump deploys i.c.e. in particular sorts of ways. to my mind there's an alignment, a consistency here. at the end of the day, donald trump will not condemn white supremacists because in my mind, to me, he is one. >> well, and again it's not just in your mind that he does these things -- >> it's in the facts. >> -- it's objective. you can look at his own words, his actions, you can look what he says at campaign rallies. you can look what he said even last night. and again, when -- remember last summer, i believe it was, where he talked about they need to go back to their own country. i think he might have made that statement in minnesota last night, ed luce. he was back once again going after an american congresswoman and saying, tell her to fix her country. it's that same sort of send them

back to their country. they're not part of this country because they're the wrong color, because they're the wrong faith. and my goodness, if -- again, if refusing to condemn white nationalism and white nationalists and if attacking the others the way donald trump attacks the others at rallies and talking about great genes and the great gene pool of the members in his white audiences, is not fascism, it certainly is an echo of fascism but i think that's even being awfully generous to donald trump and those who defended him after charlotte, to those defending him even now. >> i think the best possible explanation from trump's point of view, if you are a trump apologist, would be that he likes people who like him.

but then that, of course, begs the question, why is it that these far white white supremacist, extremist groups like him. i don't think that explanation serves at all. you judge somebody by his action. you look at his attitudes and policies on immigration. what he said, probably unrepeatable on this show about african countries as opposed to the blue eyed blond immigrants from norway. my explanation would be he has sympathy with the people who like him. but in a larger political sense, this is entirely self-destructive. he is going against every rule of a president or any other person seeking re-election. which is to appeal to more moderate people to add to your

demographic coalition. he's on a death wish here. i think he knows he's probably going to lose. he said, you guys, meaning the media and particularly the networks are going to miss me. i'm sure you saw that tweet yesterday afternoon. and he's saying, if i'm going to go down, i'm going to take -- i'm going to take you down with me. i think there's a death wish in his approach to this election that is the mark of somebody got a very dark mind. >> well, and it's always been a fear. >> yeah. >> about donald trump that if he was going to go down, he was going to try to take as many americans with him as he could. that is a warning to people around him in the cabinet, that is a warning to republicans as we move forward and it becomes

more obvious, if it does become more obvious, that donald trump cannot win this election, it is going to be responsible for republicans to do everything they can to limit the damage to this democracy and save the lives of as many americans as they can. does that sound dark? it does. is that man's mind dark? it is. are you going to prepare for it? we pray you will. will willie, all you have to do, i'm so -- not even disgusted because they're not worth disgust. but trump's long-time apologists, the anti-anti-trumpsters who defended him after charlotte, but wait he said bad both side. they tied themselves up in rhetorical knots. taking the press conferences. i think tried three times to come out and condemn the fa

fascists, the racists. you have to look at the relax of the events of the nazi, the fascists, the ku klux klan to see whether donald trump's message got across to his audience. after charlottesville david duke said donald trump showed us why we all supported him. he is going to make america great again and we pledge our support to him. you saw what the proud boys did, and really it's a shame that we're even mentioning their name. it only gives them oxygen when the press mentions their name. but they immediately stand back and stand by, emblazen that on their crest and are using that to promote, richard spencer

white nationalist fawning over donald trump and the things that he's said that's provided aid and comfort to fascists, neo-nazis, and white supremacists, and people who want to undermine this country. and, you know, willie, he cannot condemn them. he cannot condemn them by name. >> he cannot. and extremist groups like the one you just mentioned that was mentioned at the debate the other night cannot believe their luck over the last four years. these are the groups that didn't go away but they've been pushed in the shadow for generations and now because of this president they've been elevated and emboldened and a reason they're in the streets showing their faces and carrying their signs. showing up at rallies to start violence. and our reporters, if you don't follow them on twitter you

should, have been looking over the last 24 hours, 36 hours at what this means. they've been in these slack channels and on these sites and these extremist groups are dancing, can't believe they have a new logo to put on their t-shirts. and what's more, beyond the president not condemning them, they heard a call to action about going out to poll places on election day and keeping an eye on things. what do you think they hear when they hear that? keep an eye on things. when they hear from donald trump jr. that they are trump's army they need to be election security. what do you think they're going to do on election day. these are people who are emboldened and they'll be out in the streets and they're listening to the president. meanwhile because of the performance the other night, the president's allies are having

concern over his performance. they said he missed areas to hit joe biden for in areas of prep. people familiar with this tell nbc news the mood around the campaign and white house yesterday morning was worried, quiet, and shock. the consensus among people close to the campaign was the president's debate performance did not lose him any votes among his base but he needed to do more than to hold his ground. according to "the new york times," the president was not displeased with his performance. three people told the times president trump was elated about the debate and saw it as a successful outing. "the new york times" noting some of the president's advisers who shy away from giving him bad news, made no attempt to disabuse him of his assessment. "the washington post" was told in part, quote, you're not going to see anybody say it was a bad performance but they'll consider it like trump's really crazy

tweets, they'll say that's not my kind of campaign, didn't see it. they're already deliberating on how to address proud boys questions at upcoming senate debates and deflect the issue and shift to more favorable topics for them. let's bring in one of the reporters on this, correspondent carol lee, who's at the white house this morning. reading through your report it looks like there was some preparation on substance as you report on china and race. and not only did the president in his performance blow it, but in his substantive argument he whiffed on some of the lines he was supposed to deliver. >> reporter: that was one of the more interesting things we heard from people close to the president who helped him prepare saying he didn't do any traditional preparation, he wasn't interested in spending a lot of time going over how she should respond to certain lines of attack or questioning or policy issues.

but they did prep him with some pushbacks. and he repeatedly just didn't go to them. so even the parts he was prepared for, for instance when the 1994 crime bill was to come up about joe biden's support for that, the president was supposed to point to alice johnson, the 64-year-old grandmother who served two decades in prison for a nonviolent drug offense and say you are supposed to apologize to her. when he didn't, he said he was the best president ever for the african-american community. when it came to the supreme court, he was supposed to pin biden down on the handling of the clarence thomas hearings. he didn't, he switched to health care and started criticizing the obama administration about that. so there's frustration about a whole array of fronts. what he's been talking about, his comments about white

supremacy, and his refusal to go to places they had prepared him to have these answers to some of this criticism or at least hit back on biden in a way that might resonate more with voters. he didn't do that. so looking forward to the next debate, they're saying this is a different format, they hope he'll do better but resigned to the fact that they're not going to take advice and be told what to say or do. there are some among the president's team telling him ignore the controversy, plow ahead, hear your base, get out your vote and the reporting showed the best they could home for coming out of the debate is he didn't lose anybody. he needs to do more than not lose anybody. he needs to gain new voters. there's a lot of concern that he didn't do that at all. in fact, he probably alienated some. >> carol, as you know and i'm sure you can give us so many

examples of this, donald trump does not allow criticism. he does not allow people to come in and tell him that he made the mistake. thinking one of the last phone calls we had with him, it was at the end of the first week -- one of the last times we actually talked to him, it was into the first week of his presidency and asked how it went. i said, not too good, it was a little rough. and he was just enraged. he was shocked. and it was very obvious, after talking to him, that absolutely nobody then and nobody now ever criticizes him. ever self-corrects him. ever gives him constructive advice. and i'm sure you can give 100 examples of that. but what you're telling us here is this is a president who really had a -- a historically

bad performance in a debate and actually lost voters. i saw somebody who was going to vote for him, who's a prominent righter, write in a column, that he could never vote for donald trump after watching the debate. that it greatly damaged america. and yet, carol, what you're saying and what we saw years ago is nobody can correct him. he's incapable of getting better between now and the next debate because nobody will tell him the truth. >> yeah. and you only need to look at any of the president's advisers across the administration who have told him things he doesn't want to hear and he turns on them quickly. there's a reason for this. one of things that the president's team wanted him to do and would like him to do next time, and who knows if he can do this is let biden talk. going into the debate their argument was biden needs to have

a gaffe. we need to let him walk himself into forgetting about something or showing something that feeds the narrative that they've put out that he's not all there. and the president couldn't get out of his own way in terms of that. that's one of the repeated frustrations that the president's advisers have had with him throughout the process. he thinks he knows best that's always been true. but he's not willing to listen to anyone who thinks they should do something different. and if they do change it, no saying he'll follow along with the plan. >> ed luce, you were talking about how america's reputation is bleeding across the world. you look at everything that donald trump did in that debate and what he's been saying the past month as a russian aide

told gq correspondent julia yaffey about donald trump, this guy is doing our job for us. he's saying that american elections are rigged, questioning american institutions, the intelligence community, attacking american generals and admirals. undermining on full display of the world america's institutions and now even undermining the most basic thing that we've taken such great pride in, and that is the peaceful transfer of power after elections. he's saying he won't accept the results and won't guarantee a peaceful transfer of power. >> the failure to utter that

line was probably the most important line of the night, if you will. you remember the whole russian purpose in the last election was to just cast down on the integrity of the american system. just to tarnish american institutions, bring america down. wasn't necessarily to bring about hillary's defeat, i think they thought hillary would win but they wanted to badly wound her before she did by basically tarnishing the whole process and america's trust in the process. now trump is doing that on a daily basis, and refusing to talk about the sanctity of the vote, refusing to do as any other president of any party would have done, which is to talk about the sacred right to vote, and declaring whole classes of votes, the mail-in ballots as invalid and

fraudulent, what more does russia need to do? i think from a larger perspective, this is also a moment of celebration in china. there was a point during the debate where trump said that china this eaten your lunch, namely biden's lunch, during the obama administration, because of the rising u.s. tried deficit with china, which by the way is the same level as it was in 2016. and it struck me then that watching this from beijing, this, you know, sort of almost -- this caricature of the ugly american, donald trump, indulging in demagoguery, not a debate, that china was eating america's dinner and eyeing the breakfast menu, that this is extraordinarily good news for a

country that seeks to bring down democracy as the model others should follow, as the quest america has led. here's the advertisement that's best for beijing's ears, just watch this debate. >> ed luce, thank you so much. i greatly appreciate you being here. your new piece, of course, is in the financial times or will be posting this hour. mika, following up on what ed said, we don't have to just talk about vladimir putin, let's talk about what the soviet union tried to do actually from 1917 to 1991. they tried to undermine american legitimacy. and how? by taking american institutions. by attacking america's military leaders. >> now they have a whole set of -- >> i've got a list. >> -- options. >> i've got a list here. let me finish my list.

american military leaders, check. donald trump has done that. america's interest community that they considered an enemy of soviet russia. check. donald trump is doing that. attacking america as being a racist country, which is very rich coming from russia. but check. donald trump is proving their propaganda stories about us to be true. and finally what has long separated us from russia, and that is a democratic process that is legitimate and elects leaders and provides for a peaceful transfer of power. and mika, guess what, donald trump has done all of the russians' work for them. donald trump has done everything that vladimir putin would have

wanted him to do. forget whether he's an agent of russia or whether he's just a useful idiot. he's done everything that putin would have wanted him to do. and as ed just said, what more does russia need to do? donald trump is doing it all for them. and my god, that debate on tuesday night, that debate -- donald trump spewed out more russian disinformation about the voting process and about it being rigged and did more than vladimir putin could have done to under mine america in five lifetimes. >> i thought it was an interesting question to bring up at the debate since it was based on fraudulent ideas. just gave the president another platform to spew out disinformation. speaking of the debate, still ahead on "morning joe," awful an embarrassment, a you know what show.

that's how some republicans are describing this week's presidential debate. we'll dig into that with kasie hunt and jake sherman. and new polling out of south carolina that shows president trump and joe biden in a dead heat and things do not look good for senator lindsey graham eith either. >> can you do -- >> help me. help me. they're killing me. i'm lindsey graham. you're watching "morning joe" we'll be right back. hark vacmop combines powerful suction with spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one disposable pad. ♪ smooth driving pays off

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the biden campaign yesterday tweeted out this video amid his ten hour train tour through western pennsylvania yesterday. the stop in greensburg is notable as it is the county seat of west moreland county. if you were to subtract all 2016

votes, hillary clinton would be president today. it is some of the most valuable real estate on the political map and biden is hitting it in a way clinton didn't. trump carried westmoreland county by 30 points over clinton in 2016. let's bring in white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire. the crowd looked good. saw a lot of masks, by the way. but biden getting a warm welcome after the debate. >> that's right, mika. first of all, this is joe biden's return to his natural habitat, a train. and also, to retail politicking. this is a thing we haven't seen much of him do since the pandemic arrived in the united states in march. we know what a retail politician he is and how much he loves interactions with voters. this is strategic where he went, leaving the debate city, cleveland, headed through ohio

into western pennsylvania. and westmoreland county is a place that looms large this november. a county i know well, my wife's family lives out there. a county that republicans have run up the score in recent years. donald trump won 64% of the vote, and 14,000 more votes from john mccain. that's where the trump campaign is looking to do well knowing they have trouble, deep trouble in the cities of pittsburgh and philadelphia and biden is gaining support in the suburbs. so the trump campaign needs to do better in the rural counties. that's the plan, the red t in pennsylvania, the central part of the state, northern part of the state.

they need to find new voters there. and biden headed into those counties, if he can offset those margins, that bodes well for him in november. >> jonathan, we talk about the suburbs of philly. but right now in the most recent polls we've seen, joe biden is outperforming past democratic candidates specifically in the suburbs of pittsburgh in western pennsylvania. the entire race we talked about wisconsin, we've talked about michigan and florida, but this entire race may be determined the western half of pennsylvania. >> you're right, joe. you and i have talked about this and i wrote in the last week or so, about how both campaigns feel that pennsylvania may be the tipping point state this time around. the president has been there repeatedly in recent weeks because his map doesn't work

without it. if he can't keep wisconsin because he needs one of the three, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania trio. for a long time they thought wisconsin was that state. wisconsin is slipping away from them it would appear. especially if they lose arizona too. their focus has to be in pennsylvania. but those county -- westmoreland county so representative of much of pennsylvania is filled with white working class union voters, the kind of voter joe biden is set to win back, the kind that donald trump did well in 2016 with, the kind of voters breaking away from democrats, certainly those that hillary clinton had her struggles winning. biden though this is his native state, let's remember, and his campaign recognized and that's why we had the train itinerary yesterday, those are the voters he can win back. if he picks off enough of them to prevent the continued moves

to the republicans, to trump, then trump is going to have trouble as biden continues to do better than ever in the suburban areas around the big city and the state. >> let's talk about the debate, we had carol lee with reporting that said advisers were upset about it, thought it didn't go well. i read one report that made me laugh saying we'll get him to change for the next debate. good luck with that. how are they feeling about how it went, particularly the proud boys moment and do they feel they can take a different approach, or is this who he is, how he's always been and how he's going to conduct himself? >> donald trump is not going to change. at most it is a moderation around the edges. but he is who he is. in fact, he's more seemingly committed to just sort of -- this sort of line of attack. he told advisers in the days before the election, even though

there were some who wanted him to take a more positive approach, selling his accomplishments, he told them no. he said this was his moment to go after biden, to, quote, expose who he is to the american people. there was some regret, i agree with carol's reporting, that trump didn't let biden talk more. they believe biden was only okay the other night and if he had more ability to talk he would have gotten himself in more trouble but he wasn't able to do so because trump kept interrupting him, badgering him. so that is something they hope the president will do less of the next time around. but the headline, in a chaotic debate, the ugliest we've seen, the headline is the proud boys, and we saw the president try to walk that back yesterday on the white house lawn, sort of. still, while doing so he made sure to link -- while he finally said to the proud boys stand down, he reserved more of his anger for antifa, almost with

the both sides construction we saw in charlottesville. that is something that even now republicans are worried is going to loom over his campaign, but also potentially senate campaigns here in the final five weeks. >> the ap's jonathan lemire. thank you very much for that analysis. we'll see you tomorrow morning, reporting for us from the white house. joining us now, nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt. and senior writer at politico and author, jake sherman. kasie i'll start with you, you're following reaction from congressional republicans to all of this. what are you hearing? >> let's just say, mika, that the assessment from congressional republicans is not as rosie as the president's self-assessment of his debate performance on tuesday night. we have obviously chronicled p number of times that republicans have failed to tell the truth, i

guess you may put it about the president or express condemnation for him, and what we've seen him do or say, that was not the case yesterday. take a look at some of the reaction from republicans. >> do you find that concerning the president's failure to condemn groups? >> he misspoke. he should correct it. >> i want to associate myself with the remarks of tim scott, he said it was unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists, so i do so in the strongest possible way. >> he said condemn white supremacy. >> do you think mr. president was presidential last night in the debate? >> i thought it was an embarrassment last night the debate. >> did you watch the debate last night? >> sure did. >> what did you think? >> it was awful. >> awful.

others called it embarrassing. the reviews were not good, obviously. and you know, tim scott has been a voice on issues of race for republicans. he has been pretty straightforward at many times and he basically said i hope the president misspoke. if he didn't misspeak, that's a problem. you saw and we showed this morning what the president had to say, that was after tim scott's remarks that the president went down to the lawn and basically did not take back what he had said in the debate on tuesday. so all of this is a huge problem for the republicans that were just parading past the cameras. this is the kind of thing and the reason why they are so worried they may lose the senate and if they do lose the senate, it could be a landslide. especially if you look at the numbers. >> not like we didn't see this

coming. >> ya eah. jake we said earlier and ed luce was talking ability russia, as it pertains to putin's propaganda to undermine the legitimacy of american democracy. if putin had tried to do as effective a job as donald trump has done over the past month in undermining confidence in american democracy, couldn't have happened. let's move that to domestic politics. if a democratic political wizard had tried to do more damage to republican senators' chances of getting reelected over the past month, they couldn't have done it. when you look at what donald trump has called top military generals when you look at what he was quoted repeatedly by members on his own staff of saying about those american heroes who gave their lives to this country in battle. what he said to bob woodward. you look at the supreme court

choice, what it's doing to support in suburbs, what it's doing for support in women voters and again, not particularly amy coney barrett, but just the entire process being rushed through. and now you look at this white supremacy talk and the fact he cannot say, i condemn all white supremacy in the harshest terms possible. this is damaging republicans in the place, you know, parts of the electorate where they can afford to be damaged the least. and areas where people like even joni ernst have found themselves in a difficult race because her support is melting away. again, because of all the groups that donald trump continues to offend. >> that's right. the republican party is in a certain state of absolute chaos in laying out all the things you

just said. you have a president who is suggesting to a republican party that needs its base to vote that they shouldn't vote because the election is rigged. you have a republican party who is -- which is losing support in the suburbs. when you got to congress, joe, those suburbs until 2012 were the base -- not only the base of their support, the absolute bedrock of their support. republican and donald trump is just -- is just taking that to those kind of supporters and betting if he turns out the reddest of red he can turn out the presidency. it's a difficult bet, a difficult thing for members on capitol hill to contend with. kasie laid it out so well there, you see how the republican party is looking at the standard here, 33 days from election day, and saying this is -- we can't hitch our wagon to this guy until the end, we have to show space when it's advantageous for us. i can't tell you just the alarm that's going on in both house

republican and senate republican circles. in the house of representatives this has gotten no attention -- i should write about this soon, house republicans could lose another five to 15 seats. that's an estimate i keep hearing from republicans. it doesn't look good. that's the banner headlines for republicans on capitol hill. >> one of the areas of concern is south carolina. a new poll shows a statistical tie between president trump and joe biden. trump at 48%, biden at 47%. and in the senate race there, the democrat jaime harrison tied at 48 with incumbent lindsey graham. eddie glaude, lindsey graham every time he goes on fox news now makes a desperate plea for money in his state saying they're killing me out here i need your money if i'm going to

beat jamiime harrison. a democrat has not won that state since jimmy carter in '76. are you seeing south carolina in reach for joe biden? recall that was the state that saved his candidacy a few months ago. >> right. it very well may be. look, there is a reckoning in the country. people are making a choice. there's no middle ground. we see what's at stake here. and i think, you know, we tend to focus on donald trump. but there is, i think, a reckoning awaiting the republican party. those who have enabled donald trump. those who have stood by as over 200,000 americans have died as a result of covid-19. and there's, of course, demographic shifts in the south that's changing how the south will look, we see it in georgia, in texas, and we know there's an excitement among the base, that south carolina black voters are

going to turn out in massive numbers. what we're facing is clear. we're facing the new redeemers, that's what the new republican party is, those who want to defend the southern way of life, post reconstruction. those redeemers are those who have supported donald trump in what has been in some significant way, an all out assault on the basic underpinnin underpinnings, foundation of american democracy, they are going to pay for this at the polls and we're seeing it in the data now, i think we'll see it in november, willie. >> this isn't really a surprise at all for members of congress who have watched the show since 2017. we have said the fact that you cling to this man to get you through the primary process is what will actually get you defeated in the general election. that you have got to make a stand against donald trump.

and they never would do it because they feared their primary vote is too much. and in 2017, it was disastrous for them. what happened in virginia was absolutely shocking to the republican party. in 2018 because they continued to embrace donald trump because they continued to embrace a man that kept talking about carav s caravans, because they continued to embrace a man who kept making racist statements about hispanics invading the country, caging children. this actually led to the largest political landslide in an off year election in the history of our great republic. republicans were wiped out by vote total in a way that no party had ever been wiped out. same thing in 2019 in louisiana. louisiana re-elected a democratic governor. in kentucky, kentucky, they

elected a democratic governor. and here we are in 2020, seriously, how many times do i have to tell you -- i mean, really i feel like a parent here, how many times do i have to tell you, please don't put your hand on the hot stove. look, ouch. ouch. ouch. you've done four years in a row. here's the thing. you've only got a couple of weeks now to distance yourself from this man. for you republicans, who are likely going to lose and you know who you are. i mean, we could do romper room and i can hold up a mirror, talk about i can see you martha, i can see you corey, tommy, i see little tommy in north carolina, i see susan in maine, joni, how

are you doing joni? how's it going out there? you had a great reputation before you got into congress. you had a great reputation before you became an apologist for donald trump. do you really want to leave public service being remembered as nothing but a sycophant for a man who can't even condemn white nationalism because that will hang over you, all of you, for the rest of your lives. there is no wringing of your hands, susan. and saying it was terrible on both sides. you really, actually, have to speak out against this. while we talk about the senate and jake, while you talk about the house, there are a few legislative yours truly that it the house and senate. i have been thinking the last month or two that donald trump

was going to blink and at some point was going to have to move forward, even though some republicans didn't want him to, with another relief bill. because we're seeing day after day more people being fired from their jobs. more people being laid off, being furloughed sp they know what that means. that means they're never coming back again. i really thought before the election, they would have one more coronavirus relief bill. but so far that just doesn't look like it's happening. what are you hearing? >> it doesn't look like it's happening. today we woke up to the news that american airlines and united airlines are cutting 32,000 jobs. which is a stunning number of jobs for two of the nation's largest carriers. and steve mnuchin and nancy pelosi are trying to get a deal somewhere around $2 trillion, senate republicans want basically nothing to do with this. i think the untold story here, maybe it's been told and i've not been paying attention is

that donald trump has not leaned in on this at all. he loves spending money, not a fiscal conservative, he has no real policy preferences when it comes to the stimulus practice. if he leaned in saying we have to get this done, i don't like nancy pelosi but the economy is hurting and we have to get something done, he would have a bill and he would have a massive victory. i can't understand why the president won't do that, it's one of the mysteries to me of this administration. i'm skeptical that a deal will come together. nancy pelosi and steve mnuchin are going to talk again today. today is probably the last day to get close to a bill, remaining a trillion dollars apart. and the session is coming to a quick close here. >> all right. >> politico's jake sherman, thank you so much. coming up, the president goes on another racist rant

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another massive issue for minnesota is the election of joe biden's plan to inundate your state with a historic flood of refugees. they pledged a 700% increase in refugees -- 700%. congratulations minnesota. congratulations. no. and what about omar, where she gets caught harvesting. what the hell is going on. i hope your u.s. attorney is involved. what is going on with omar. i've been reading these reports for two years about how corrupt

and crooked she is. >> lock her up. lock her up. >> harvesting is terrible but it's the least of the things she has done. then she tells us how to run our country, can you believe it? how the hell did minnesota elect her. what the hell is wrong with you people? biden will turn minnesota into a refugee camp, he said that. overwhelming schools, inundating your hospitals, and public resources. you know that, you're already there. it's a disgrace what they've done already to your state. >> that's trump at a rally in mike pen minnesota, trying the same stunt he did in 2016. but here you have a president of the united states encouraging his own justice department to investigate a political rival. once again being a racist.

borrowing from the fascist playbook when he talks about why she is telling us what to do with our country. our country? hold on a second. she's an american. every bit as much, donald, as your mother was an american when she game here as an immigrant. every bit as much as your grandparents were immigrants when they came here from germany. and she's a members of congress. >> yeah. >> so, mika, donald trump saying, again, what's she doing telling us to do with our country -- >> no, it's despicable. >> -- because she's not white and a baptist or presbyterian, that somehow she's not an american and also that she should be investigated. >> if you think about the dynamic in that crowd, there are some crowds we watch where we

cannot believe that people are laughing and cheering at some of the hateful things that he's saying and agreeing with them. but in this specific case, these people look up to the president. they're getting information from him in that moment. and he's teaching them to hate her. it is -- you have to wonder how we got here and you have to ask republicans exactly how far you are going to go with this president. you're shocked you might be losing elections right now? really? >> they're gone. >> you own this! this is all yours. >> again, this is a president who, again, a year ago told her and other women of color who were members of congress to go back home. to go back to where they came from. >> he's despicable but you stand sile silent. >> they stand silent and are just as guilty with their silence. >> joining us here's the host of

"politics nation," reverend al sharpton, his new book is "rise up, confronting a country at the cross roads". in which he tackles a range of pressing issues from civil rights to immigration to climate change. >> rev we're going to get to that in a second. but first i want to ask you and other members on the panel, not only what they thought about minnesota but also get your reaction to the president of the united states once again refusing to condemn white nationalists. >> there's no question the president is not condemning white nationalists or white supremacy because that is who he is and we've been saying all along. let's not forget he raised his political profile and became politically influential off of birtherism. off of saying that he, talking about obama, is not one of us. the message being, if you're not

a white american, you're not one of us. he was born in kenya, even though clearly that was not the case. he lied, i have a birth certificate that he wasn't born in hawaii. that's how we became to know donald trump other than this entrepreneur developer which we have found out is not even true there, but before that, he was that. what made him a politician was us against them. was bigotry, was bias, so why would he denounce what he himself is and what made him become what he has become. unfortunately, all the way to being president of the united states. so he's singing a song that brought him to the stage. and i think that the audience has gotten sick and tired of it. but he still has no other song to sing because that's who he is. >> willie, he was asked about it yesterday. obviously a lot of republicans were very concerned about his performance. the fact that he told the white

supremacist group, an anti antisemantic group to stand by, he was given a chance to distance himself yesterday, couldn't come out and say he opposed white supremacists. so here you have donald trump, not only hurting senators -- i talked about the senators whose standing he was damaging. but damaging his own standing in the suburbs of philadelphia and the suburbs of pittsburgh, and the suburbs of tampa, in the suburbs of orlando. i could go around every swing state. in the suburbs of phoenix. and obviously on the playing field where the yankees squeaked out an incredible win last night against the cleveland indians. it was one of the greatest games ever. but yes, the stench of racism hung over progressive field in cleveland. okay, you guys know we're in the middle of talking about

something serious and you show me a clip of baseball. let's get trump down for a second. willie -- >> give us a break. >> it's a pavlovian response we have to go there. then we'll come back. your new york yankees, incredible game last night and they beat the cleveland indians and move on. >> for people listening in the car and confuse about what's happening right new, we put up a video of the yankee game which derailed us. they won the game last night, best of three, yankees great on paper this year, didn't have a great regular season, flashes of brilliance then losing streaks but the last two nights they looked like the team they were supposed to be. hope they march on and move on. there's the bracket and everything. we're doing sports coverage now. >> all you need to know if you haven't been following the mlb playoffs, tampa pay advanced,

won their series against toronto or buffalo, whoever they are. the lovable houston astros unfortunately moved past the twins. and i say that for several reasons including the fact the poor twins, a really good baseball team has lost now 18 playoff games in a row. and that's just -- you know, that's just something where you win a game, you break the streak and suddenly winning becomes easy. but you have to feel for the good people of minnesota who are great fans. that's a great organization, the twins, and, you know, it just takes a win. maybe they get it next year. >> they're good again and again and again. but for some reason can't do it in the playoffs. lost 18 in a row. but the rays are a good team. see that one second of john carlo stanton video set us off. >> i can't control myself. >> i knew you wouldn't be able

to. let's go back to your comments about president trump given the opportunity on the stage by chris wallace to condemn white supremacist groups and said which do you want me to condemn? and joe biden was the one who put out the proud boys then went into the rambling about the proud boys. yesterday, given another chance, here's what the president said at the white house. >> mr. president, can you say what you meant last night when you said the proud boys should stand back and stand by. >> i don't know who the proud boys are. you have to give me a deaf in addition. i don't know who they are. >> did you misspeak when you said stand by? that's my first question. >> look, law enforcement will do their work. they're going to stand down. they have to stand down. >> white supremacists, they clearly love you and support you, do you welcome that? >> i want law and order to be a very important part. it's a very important part of my campaign. when i say that, what i'm talking about is law enforcement

has to -- police have to take care. they should stop defunding the police like they've done in new york. >> i'm talking about white supremacist. >> i just told you. >> do you denounce them? >> i denounce any form, any form, any form of any of that you have to denounce. but i also -- joe biden has to say something about antifa. >> it's astounding he needs three, four, five cracks at the question to say all forms. if it's you me or anybody else, when condemn left the mouth of chris wallace you would have jumped the question, of course, i do. and proud boys is that the racist group that's starting violence in the streets? yeah. i've heard about them and i denounce them. the president can't do it. >> even then he said denounce all forms of that. can't say i denounce white

supremacy, he can't get that whole sentence out of his mouth because he sees them as his supporters, as those that say publicly they voted for him, and they intend to vote for him again. and he sees himself akin to them. we are talking about donald trump who called for the death penalty of five innocent young black men and brown men in new york of raping a white woman they did not do. we are talking about donald trump that in the '70s was sued with his father for racial discrimination. let's not act like he doesn't have a track record here. many of us trying to be friendly in the '90s saying give him the benefit of the doubt, he'll go somewhere else, that has not happened. i think clearly donald trump is the candidate of the white backlash after the presidency of barack obama. that's what he ran on, that's who he is. he's tried to, as president, undo everything that barack obama did. and he sees joe biden as part of

what he had hoped america would never have, and that is a diverse president and vice president in the white house. >> you know, kasie, i was talking about the senators who -- the republican senators martha mcsally many people on both sides consider her race lost. cory gardner in colorado, the same. you can talk about susan collins in maine, that is closer than many people expected but she's down in just about every poll. thom tillis doing terrible in north carolina according to most polls. you have steve bullock in montana giving steve daines a run for his life. and lindsey graham in south carolina. as these republicans are watching the debate, the reaction of the debate and they see that donald trump will not condemn white supremacists and, in fact, tells them to stand by as the election nears, are you

hearing what their reaction is? what they're saying? shouldn't lindsey graham be coming out in south carolina, shouldn't martha mcsally in arizona be coming out and strongly condemning that language? >> lindsey graham did put stuff out on twitter about this. it underscored to me the level of trouble he's in had. partly because a third of the population of south carolina is african-american. he's running against jaime harrison who has long standing ties to jim clyburn who's a legend in south carolina and who has been running a remarkably strong campaign and has raised a lot of money. you're right. the line and what the president has done here as moral implicatio implications. from a political perspective, it's a disaster.

lindsey graham said i associate with tim scott and he was asked to explain what does that mean and he was willing to say it out loud himself, which tells you he's thinking not only about his own race but his majority across the map. this is a problem for his majority. you didn't mention joni ernst in iowa, another one. and the conversation is increasingly about what exactly are we headed for in terms of is this going to be a landslide or not? it's not going to be just one or two of these people that you listed, it's more and more likely that it's going to be all of them at once. and republicans are scrambling to find bright spoits, point to michigan with a strong candidate doing better than expected. but it's the only thing they have when you have these private conversations otherwise the

whole thing looks grim, and when the president does something like he did on tuesday and then again on wednesday it gets worse. >> if anyone is surprised they shouldn't be. the commission on presidential debates announced yesterday that it will adjust the format of the remaining two matchups before the election because they too could not predict how unpredictable the president would be in the debate. in a statement the group said, the event made clear that additional structure should be added to the format of the remaining debates to ensure a more orderly discussion of the issues. two people familiar with the commission's thinking tell "new york times" that several considerations are changing, new limits on speaking time that would replace an open discussion. the group is weighing whether to grant moderators the power to shut off a candidate's microphone and penalize an

interpreting candidate by forcing him to give more time back to his opponent. a trump campaign spokesman said in response, they're only doing this because their guy got mumled. >> what a joke. >> donald trump was the -- >> hold on. donald trump -- >> this is fantastic. >> donald trump knew he lost. he had the stench of being a loser all over him. >> seriously. >> every poll showed he got destroyed. >> you want biden to do well in the next two debates have them exactly the way you did the first one. okay. because donald trump just looked horrible. but the debate was not run fairly so they're trying to figure out how to do that. here's how joe biden responded, by the way. >> i just hope there's a way in which the debate commission can control the ability of us to answer the question without interruptions. i'm not going to speculate on

what happens in a second or third debate. >> all right. let's bring in associate editor of commentary magazine noah rothman. your latest piece is entitled "trump lets conservatives down again" you write in part, the president could not bring himself to commit to the idea that the results of this election will be legitimate. he labors to frame this contest as fraudulent and he is deliberatery am ambiguous about whether he would facilitate a peaceful transition of power should he lose. the threats are intimidating to many but they should not be. the president is discrediting the charges he will levy if the election results don't go his way. and by laying the cognitive ground work for his own defeat

at the polls, donald trump has bathed himself in the stink of failure. >> noah, rod drayer with the american conservative, a guy who obviously not a fan of joe biden, not a fan of the democratic party, believes the left is destroying america wrote this in the american conservative. trump's refusal simply to follow the ordinary rules of debate, his constant talking over biden, symbolized his inner refusal to follow the rules of our constitutional order. it was repulsive and frightening, he is unfit for office. and rod also talked about how sickening it was to have donald trump completely dismiss the memory of joe biden's dead son and then attack his other son for substance abuse. describing that also as being vile on the president's part. i would say it's hard to imagine

the president doing much worse and offending more people than he did in the last debate. but, of course, he always finds a way to go lower. >> i mean, he is reliably a terrible advocate for just about everything republicans believe. there is a theory abroad that he is casting himself as sort of the strong horse in the election because of his conduct and affect. i just think that's a flaw, in so far as what he's talking about is his own loss. he's talking about how inevitably he's going to fail. but what he's pitching to voters here is a lost cause. that fun mentally is not an animating force. that's not going to get you out to the polls. i think there is a good faith case to be made that he was trying to condemn white supremacy here. but if you're a good faith actor

you must concede that there's a lot of ambiguity here, and it happens all the time. and there shouldn't be any ambiguity here because it's a black and white issue. and he hurls the most venom at anybody he has a disagreement with. when he doesn't, it suggests he doesn't have a real problem with the groups as long as they support him. that's a conclusion i don't begrudge anybody reaching because the president doesn't do anything to disspell it. >> we had report this is morning that behind the scenes congressional republicans are panicked about their own races, the drag effect of donald trump behaving this way this close to their own elections and what it means to the senate maybe for years going forward. so what is your sense of his performance at these debates and its impact not just on his own

election chances but on those of republicans trying to get reelected in very close races? >> i'm of a mind we won't really remember a lot of these events in two weeks. there are a lot of events that are going to intervene that will be more important. if we remember the debate it will be a general sense of discomfort that everyone had watching it, it was a brutal experience, you were not comfortable. the president made it that way in a lot of ways. and probably joe biden's line just shut up, man. because it encapsulates the entire theme of the campaign, which is to rob the president of his microphone and provide it to joe biden and that clip will be played over and over and over again. what's troubling, just to briefly get back to his remarks about ie lan omar is once again the president cannot make a salient case that any other republican would make. you can make a case against omar

easily because you don't have to cite a single republican to do so, she has apologized for making anti-semitic remarks sayi saying, and when she said politicians have a foreign allegiance, her own party tried to censure her. you can make that case easily but the president cannot. and the president has to be frustrated with the fact the chief communicator isn't up for the job. >> noah, thank you for that. let's bring in writer for "the new york times" and contributor to the magazine, jim routenberg. his latest piece is the cover story entitled "the attack on voting, how president trump's false claim of voter fraud is being used to disenfranchise americans" he writes in part as the 2020 presidential election

nears, it is becoming clear that the trump administration and the republican party are not just looking at but heavily investing in the largely nonexist tent problem of voter fraud. a "the new york times" magazine investigation based on thousands of pages of court records and interviews found an extensive effort to gain partisan advantage by aggressively promoting the false claim that voter fraud is a pervasive problem. the effort takes its most prominent form in the president's statements which promote the false notion that voter fraud is rampant and he was allow today do this again in the debate, which is stunning to me, there were so many changes that need to be made with the debate or they shouldn't have them if they can't control the conversation. >> jim, this has been going on for such a long time, and it's

so interesting that the excuse goes from party to party. i remember being a republican during the 2000 recount. and the second we woke up the next morning and the 2000 recount was close, people we were -- democrats -- there are ballot boxes missing, they were at schools taken away. i remember as a republican saying, losers always whine about voter fraud and there's never voter fraud. and then we had the debate ten years later about vote r ids and republicans saying we need voter ids. and back and forth. and both sides agreeing that as a percentage of the overall votes, this issue has been, for years by both sides, basically a red herring.

now, of course, donald trump is basing his entire post election strategy on following this up in a way that nobody else has ever done. in a way he's purposefully trying to undermine the legitimacy of an american presidential election. >> if you talk to any side of this debate, even trump's own supporters say we finally have a guy who's going to talk about voter fraud like crazy. including people who have been proponents of this idea that this is a kind of conservative movement that's built up around this idea of widespread voter fraud a threat to the republic. they say this is our guy. he's in the white house and controls the levers of government to drive this forward. and as you noted he has a giant national audience. >> so at this point, though, the attack on voter fraud, the lies and the discussion about the election that the president is putting out there, the narrative

that he's putting out there, it appears to me that he is hoping for some sort of reaction if things don't go well. is that a -- i'm talking about violen violence. is that a fair assessmentment that these conversations are pushing something else, something bigger, something more dangerous? >> what he's definitely doing and seen this already, he's driving his own supporters to the polls as what he says, poll watchers, monitors, that's already causing problems around the country. that's what his language was intended to do. the proud boys, the context of him talking about the proud boys was, people going to polls and looking out for trouble and that's not obviously the spirit of election observation. so there's an agitation factor here definitely. no doubt. >> let's bring in the co-chair of the racial justice organization color of change.

heather mcgee, an nbc news political analyst. what's your take on this? >> this cover story couldn't be more well timed. this is the question. we see the polls geditting wide in the advancement of democrats up and down the narrative. we have taking root that a multi -- black and brown people being criminal that is carried into the ballot box and somehow -- it started with the election of barack obama, the idea that it couldn't possibly have happened without widespread voter fraud. and unfortunately the arbiters, the referees who should be calling foul on this, who should be clearing the way to the plate for, you know, people to participate in our democracy are being worked right now by the

right wing. whether it's folks in this government who are, you know, putting up barriers to register, whether it's the courts that are, you know, really handling down terrible decisions to disenfranchise americans or it's even facebook who has allowed this propaganda to stay on the internet calling for people to enlist in trump's army to watch the poll. that is really dangerous rhetoric. and that's still being okayed by facebook. >> and it's coming directly from the campaign asking for a trump's army to go watch polling places. how are election officials bracing for this? the president says it every time he goes out this will be a rigged election, a can't who thought he was going to win wouldn't say this every time he spoke in public. what are they worried about? what do they think could happen on election day and the days after? >> interestingly, it goes to --

and you have talked about it, the lack of congressional funding. the officials were hoping for more money because the way you combat this is you count the vote as fast as you can, as cleanly you can, and educate the public about the process. so election officials are concerned because they don't have the equipment they need to count the extra ballots, the money for the educational materials so they're going to do their best to cry from the roof tops. this is bipartisan, there are a lot of republican secretaries of state troubled by the rhetoric by the white house, fearing it'll bring action that there's a huge problem in an election when there isn't. >> jim your important piece is up online now in the new york times magazine. >> thanks, jim. rev, i want to circle back to "rise up" your best selling

book, at the top of a lot of charts. i want to talked to about the women who have influenced you. like i said yesterday what i find fascinating about the book, i have known you for such a long time as an opponent and as an ally and as a friend, didn't know your background that well. and i'm fascinated by how women have shaped your life. starting with shirley chissum who told you didn't like your. mar, straighten up and fly right. i had a few women in my life that did the same for me. >> i talk about a variety of issues. and in talking about gender equality and women, two women were influential one shirley

chisholm, i met her when i was around 13, she ran for congress in brooklyn and many of the men, the black political leaders were, against her. shirley took me in said you're the boy breepreacher you need t on the right side. as i was riding around doing the prep stuff, i was the person to fire up the crowd, i was a little boy preacher, she's say alfred, i was born alfred sharpton, later i dropped it to al. alfred, you misspoke that word. sit up straight. fix your tie. she was very strict on me to where i could almost hear her when i mispronounced words. the second one that i talked about in there because all of this i do in the context of

talking about sexism, even in black leadership who didn't support shirley when she ran for president by the way, most of the black leadership went against her saying she was too much women's rights and women's rights groups wouldn't support her saying she was too much for black rights. the other was plmrs. considerett king. martin convinced his mother, al may be a little urban and rough edged but his heart is in the king movement. he started at 13 in the north in new york. and mrs. king started, in the late '90s, having these conversations with me. she was very mild and the kind of person that could say something stern to you, you get home later and say she's

reprimanding you. she'd say al, i like this, but why did you say this? use this? are you trying to incite people? martin would not. and she kind of in a gentle but firm way, stop saying things that me and joe scarborough would fight about. so she'd say, you don't mean that, why did you say it? so between those two, i tried to get across you have to look at the end goal or are you caught up in the theatrics. and two women helped bring that home to me, aside from the fact i was raised by a single mother who made it all possible. >> and mrs. king said to you, you've got to learn to filter what you say for the long-term gain and not the short-term satisfaction of being theatrical. otherwise you can win the crowd

but lose the crown. and she also said if you and the people you're fighting have the same kind of language, what's the difference? eddie cloud is with us and has a question for you, rev. eddie? >> congratulations on the book. i was so struck by your relationship with shirley chisholm, mrs. c as you called her. shirley chisholm is a model for me. how did she respond to the male chauvinistic kind of response to the run for presidency in 1972 -- >> she didn't even -- she didn't even -- she didn't even get invited. the national black political convention. >> i know. so what -- what -- what did she model for you in how she responded to that black political convention. and in some ways them snub her? >> i was a that convention, i

was 18 years old. the youngest one on the platform committee. she was not invited and she was running for president that year. i remember when i got back to brooklyn and was talking to her. she said, alfred, just remember you've got to be willing to stand up even against those in your own tribe. and you have to keep your eye on the prize, face adversity, don't try to duck it, face it. i think in many ways i learned how to deal with being unpopular among some circles, even my own base, as shirley chisholm she never showed it as personal hurt, she showed me it was obstacles and things you have to face. she said they're all misogynist. she said, you must understand you're a boy preacher, god made

women as equal as man. i'm not going to walk behind a man, i want to walk next to him. it only made her stronger. when i look today at kamala harris on the ticket being a vice presidential candidate, first black woman in history being on the ticket. i'm looking at mrs. c in heaven smiling down saying alfred i told you, if we break through we will keep going. >> heather mcgee has the next question for alfred. >> rev, i'm loving these stories. it's so wonderful. great they're all throughout your book. there are so many people, millions who have moved into activism in the past handful of year. and the past handful of months who have never been there. including a lot of young people, white folks, what message do you have for them?

>> the message is, first of all be yourself. be authentic and do what it is you were called to do. but always know what the goal is. if the goal is that we want to change laws, then your activism ought to be geared towards changing laws like we had the big march on washington around the george floyd and john lewis law. you don't want to do things that would make a jury feel that the person that we're saying is an innocent person that should never have been treated in an unfair way and they're not violent and you're going to be violent and you can twist the jury. know the goal and conduct yourself toward the goal. the other thing is, there's nothing new under the sun. we see a lot of young activists questioning those that are older. that's not new. they questioned dr. king, that's where slick came from. there were younger people then, the black power crowd. you had julian barn and jesse jackson with dr. king at the

same time. others disagreed with them. they were all the same age. there's no monolith. don't try to have everybody your way. don't be purist. don't be purist, be effective. if we do that we find we all may take different roads but if we're on the same highway headed to the same place that's all that matters. >> the new book is "rise up, confronting a country at the cross roads" by reverend alfred sharpton -- >> i should have never told her that. >> never should told her. >> heather mcgee, thank you for coming on today. and now let's bring in retired four star general stanley mcchrystal. former commander of the nation's premier military counterterrorism force, the

joint special operations command and the author of the book entitled "leaders, myth and reality". and with the book in mind, general, give me a sense of what your take was on the debate and the state of the presidential race so far? >> great. thanks for having me. i appreciate the conversation that's going on. first off, i think we're in an extraordinarily important time in our nation. i think we all sense that. we're about to select leadership not for the last four years but the next four years. i hope each of us votes with our conscien conscience. that's different. we have different views. that's good. that's appropriate. if we all do a judgment based effort, i think we'll come out right. why am i speak out? one, because i've seen what happens when we stop talking about policy issues or differences and it starts to become cultural or tribal. in afghanistan and iraq we saw

violence that went way beyond anything that was logical. and we say that could never happen in our country but i'm not sure we're in a position to make that kind of confident statement. when i tell people what i want, i can't tell you what anyone else wants for a president, but i can tell you what i want for a commander in chief. the first is, we talk about commander in chief, it's not authority, it's responsibility. the commander in chief accepts responsibility for all the people that they serve. as a young military officer i was taught to inspect the feet of the young infantry workmen that worked for me, i was taught to eat last, sleep less. i was taught it was about them because they are what makes it happen and i am lucky to be a small part of that. so i'm looking for a president that is humble enough to understand that they are a servant. i don't think we need a genius,

i don't think we need a magician. we need an honest person willing to listen. someone who will take in information, surround themselves withal le with talented people. anyone we chose will make mistakes, that's for sure. but the reality is if we pick for character, values, we'll be best off. >> so, general, obviously there have been a lot of people concerned over the past month or so especially with what the president of the united states what the commander in chief has said about top generals, admirals, calling them losers, other names i won't repeat on this show. his staff members and military men and women around him reporting to the atlantic ima a

magazine that he denigrated those who have died for this country and are now in cemeteries overseas, i'm curious what your thought is on how the military is responding to these almost unprecedented challenges. you can see what happened on june 1st, when the president tried to pull the military in to a political event. and what the chairman of the joint chiefs had to say a few days later. is donald trump fit to be commander in chief for the next four years? what is the last month -- where has that brought you in your assessment of where we are? >> well, i think that it's a data point that we all can see. my father and grandfather were soldiers, by four brothers were soldiers, my wife is the daughter of a soldier, her three sisters are soldiers. so we are wrapped in the culture

of soldiers p when we hear things like that, clearly it's disappointing but let me give you a comparative review. i worked most closely with president obama and vice president biden when i commanded in afghanistan. i had policy differences at times. they didn't see everything the way i did. but in every instance they listened. in every instance they took in my view. and every instance i felt that they were trying to make the best decision based on all the information they had and based upon a bedrock of values. so when we talk about a leader for the next four years, i think we talk about someone, in my view, like vice president joe biden who is humble enough to listen to experts. who is humble enough to respect people who served and who have served. not to put them on a pedestal and think military can do no wrong because we know that's not true, but instead to have a

respectful relationship and get past some of the hyperbole. >> it sounds like you believe vice president joe biden would be a more effective commander in chief over the next four years? >> joe, i do. i think that he would surround himself with an effective team of good people. i think he would set a tone in which he brings out the best of people. again, not everybody will agree with every policy, they never will and that's held thihealthy a democracy. but at the end of the day you have to believe your commander in chief is someone you can trust. and that's joe biden. >> many people will point to the 2010 article that you were critical of joe biden, you were criticizing him to the point it

cost you your job. have you talked through that? >> we did not. i talked to him right after the incident but there was a lot more smoke than fire in that reality. i never didn't respect vice president joe biden or president obama. i think my willingness to endorse now should signal to people that there was a respectful relationship then and just how important i think it is to replicate that kind of respectful relationship between senior military leaders and now. >> can you speak to presidential temperament. for someone who held a job like yours as a general, who commanded armies, commanded people whose lives depended on your decisions, what does it mean to have a commander in chief with the right kind of temperament and how would you describe that in a president? >> i think you've hit something that's very important because crises will come that are unanticipated. we can't know what's going to

buffett an administration. i think the first thing the president has to have is a associate of values they believe in for the nation and what they're for. and and it's about the nation not themselves. and sometimes they have to be willing to take in information and that information can be upsetting or irritating. i know you develop a strategy and you start to propagate that forward and it doesn't go well and people in your organization have to come tell you it's not going well. and there's a great danger because you endorsed it, your name is attached to it, you have to create an environment that says if we are going the wrong way, you have to tell me that. and so, that environment that's created is essential across the government as it is in the military organization. >> general, i'm going back in reading a biography of george marshall right now because george marshall seemed to be to

tip fie what the romans described as virtue, public virtue, putting service to your country ahead of yourself. and i'm reminded in that biography of your book "leaders, myth and realities." can you talk about one of the biggest myths about what makes a great leader and actually the reality that at the end of the day what are you looking for in a person when you want a leader on a battlefield or in a board room or in a classroom? >> that's a great question. we profiled 13 leaders, my favorite was dr. martin luther king jr., he's often viewed two dimensionally, he stood on the steps of the lincoln memorial and gave this amazing speech in 1963. people think he was famous for his rhetoric, his skills, but in

reality he was a roll up your sleeves manager. he was leading a movement, he didn't have financial power, in fact, he was a relatively young man, killed before he was 40, and so what he was doing was constantly pulling in different perspectives, constantly making deals. cop sta constantly making compromises, bringing that element into a network to move forward. it's that unifying effort that i think is the miracle of what dr. king did but we sometimes don't focus on that part of it for the other great things he did. >> thank you so much. >> retired general. >> retired general stanley mcchrystal, of course, we greatly appreciate it and looking forward to reading "leaders, myth and reality". kasie hunt an endorsement from general mcchrystal for joe

biden. yet another military leader who is expressing concern about the president has commander in chief, obviously for valid, good reasons. but breaking news today. and actually, because of past criticisms, because of past conflicts that actually makes this endorsement all the more impressive. >> well, and joe be, you know, think you heard from general mcchrystal, an explanation even though he may have at times been frustrated and was captured on tape and ultimately lost his job because of that criticism, it took place in a completely different context. because of the way that president obama and vice president biden were approaching not just running the government and making national security decisions but our very democracy. i think when you think about the way that our veterans across the

board and the generals cited, the troops that he would wait for them to eat, before he would eat and the values that are taught and the reason why people put their lives on the line for our country, what are they -- they spend more time than any of us thinking about the consequences and the values that will come from, you know, being a part of an organization like that. they are putting their lives on the line for a set of values that we have all signed up to share as citizens of the united states. and i think that that's part of why, and certainly when i speak privately there are a number of members of congress who are veterans, many in the republican party many on the democratic side more so than the past and they speak about this in a different way when you talk to them privately because they've actually lived it out. so i think that general mcchrystal's comments carry a

lot of weight and there are a host of other officials he is the latest in many -- in a long list that stepped up and said this is not what i put my life on the line for. we need a change. and coming up france lunts on the state of the presidential race and what undecided voters told him after watching tuesday's debate. a note that joe's new book, "saving freedom, truman, the cold war and the fight for western civilization" is coming out november 24th but you can preorder now. we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." ♪ when disaster strikes to one, we all get together and support each other. that's the nature of humanity. ♪

it has encouraged other people to take the time for each other. ♪ ♪

i think we're in trouble. i don't think no one wants to live in a society where everybody is scared -- they're afraid of each other. >> right. >> we're walking a tight rope. and we want somebody, you know, in office who is going to calm the storm because right now we're going through a thunderstorm. we're going through a hurricane. and no one has a plan. they say we have a plan, but there's nothing detailed about it. and i want to hear the details. i want to see these presidents come down and work with our local officials and our

activists. and the people who are causing the ruckus. because the only way you can resolve things is if you come and you talk and you have a viable plan. just don't give me a stump speech. i want to see action that's going to bring about an amicable resolve for everybody. and we're not perfect. but, darn it, we can try to get there. >> that was kimberly, an undecide voter from ohio and one of the participants in frank lips's focus group during the first presidential debate. frank luntz joins us now along with jeremy peters. frank, tell us where you did this focus group and what you found. how did the voters feel after the debate? >> well, this is the first time it's ever been done and i hope to do it again for the next three debates if we have debates is that we found undecided voters in eight swing states. so this was a nationwide effort.

these are people who were carefully screened. and i'm still not convinced that all of them were truly undecided. but i was right there in the debate hall in cleveland and we started only ten minutes after the debate ended. so you've got the fresh, unvarnished, unadulterated points of view of people who matter more than anyone else in the election. and what i felt afterward was real sadness because we all, who get a chance to appear on your show, we're the elite. we do this for a living. and we understand why people say what they say. those undecided voters were crushed. they were de pressed. they felt that -- debates not give them what they were working for and worse yet, they thought this was an embarrassment. and the language they used to describe both candidates, but particularly donald trump, i'll acknowledge that, was harsh. going into it, six of them had voted for trump, six of them had

voted for clinton. the others had either voted for gary johnson or stayed out of it. and it was really de pressing what we saw or what they saw. the outcome of this is that some of them are not going to vote. they were so turned off by the process, they're simply not going to participate. >> so i feel like that is a contrast to trump supporters who, when you ask them about his behavior after a moment like the one we saw at the debate, it's, oh, he doesn't mean it. oh, he's just like that. he likes to, you know, shake things up. he didn't mean that. seems to me you've got kind of a different reaction this time around. there was something maybe that really struck people the wrong way. >> that's correct. what was fascinating about this is that the first ten or 15 minutes and because we did this

online, i was running a chat through the entire debate. in the first 15 minutes, they actually enjoyed it. they found it entertaining. after another 15 minutes, they started to get agitated. and after 90 minutes, it was too much for them to take. what we've always seen with donald trump is this reaction owned in sound bites or only for short periods and short bursts. to actually watch it for 90 minutes when you want to hear the exchange between them, when you want to do where they really stand and what they want to do, then it becomes annoying. but joe biden wasn't in the clear, either. they were shocked when he said to the president shut up. they did not like it when he called him a clown. they laughed at it. within five minutes, they were practically crying over it. it was just an "s" show. they praised him for making the effort to try to clarify, but two last things. number one, they wanted to give

the moderator the chance to close off the microphones so the candidates can't do it and number two is they expect both candidates to abide by the rules and to give the other side a chance to be heard. >> frank, it's willie. i mean this question sincerely and not rhetorically, but what are undecided voters still waiting to see? after four years of president trump and watching joe biden for however long he's been in public life, what are they looking for? >> they're upsay the set about both candidates and the undecided voters are more negative than those who want to replace donald trump because they think that trump does not have the persona to be president in the way that they want it and they're afraid that joe biden is too extreme. they don't know where he stands and what he's really going to do. so they're still undecided out of fear, but a very different fear. for biden, it's about policy. but trump, it's about persona

and they haven't made up their minds which matters more to them and which they feel will have a bigger impact on their lives. i will tell you that i believe joe biden, based on my undecided voters, i believe joe biden won that debate, but that does not preclude trump from coming back unless trump decides that he's not going to debate at all. if donald trump actually made that decision because of changes to the commission debates going forward, that would seal joe biden's victory in this presidential race. >> how fascinating, frank, that voters think that joe biden is too extreme when you and i have grown up and seen this guy being attacked from the left for 40 years for being too close to credit card companies, too close to corporations because, of course, he's from delaware. supporting too many military actions. we could go down that list and time and again it's joe biden

who is criticized even from his own left, from the democratic party, for being too moderate. so this fear -- and by the way, i'm hearing that, too, from all of my republican friends who are trying to justify voting for donald trump. oh, biden he's an extremist, he's a socialist. where are they getting this information? what, is it facebook? is it fox? where are they getting the information that this guy is an extremist? >> well, let me add one thing because it's very personal. and i have not talked about this on tv, actually, until right now. i had a stroke in january. and i had a stroke up in new hampshire while i was teaching my students. i was doing a focus group for the "l.a. times" when this happened. and i was kept in the hospital for a week. joe biden was the first politician who i saw afterward. and when he was informed of what happened to me, he broke out of the line where they shake the hands. he came over to me and gave me the biggest hug.

and he didn't let go. and i know how that felt. and it changed -- it's like all this weight had left me. joe biden is a kind man. he's a decent man. he's been through hell himself. on several occasions. and so i don't like the tenor of this campaign. i don't like the ugliness of this campaign. it doesn't have to be this way. where are they getting the information? they're being fed the information. we don't watch our news to inform us. we watch our news to affirm us. and that's probably the greatest strategy of the american political process. and our undecided voters feel it every day. joe, we should ask these candidates to inspire us, not to offend us. and that is the problem in that first debate. we were offended by it. >> yeah. >> well done, frank luntz, thank you very much. jeremy peters, if you could stay with us, we're going to get to your new reporting in the

next hour. and up next, the president claims he doesn't know who the proud boys are. he doesn't know them. like he didn't know anything about maybe david duke in 2016. >> or the klan. >> remember that? we're back in a moment. tonight, i'll be eating a veggie cheeseburger on ciabatta, no tomatoes.. [hard a] tonight... i'll be eating four cheese tortellini with extra tomatoes. [full emphasis on the soft a] so its come to this? [doorbell chimes] thank you. [doorbell chimes] bravo. careful, hamill. daddy's not here to save you. oh i am my daddy. wait, what? what are you talking about?

remember when donald trump received the endorsement of former klan leader david duke and lying about knowing who he was. >> i don't know anything about david duke. i don't know anything about what you're talking about with white supremacy or white sprim supremacists. >> remember when donald trump retweeted a far right anti-islamic group and then said this? >> you're telling me about these people because i know nothing about these people. >> well, you'll never know what he's saying now about the proud boys, a white supremacist group who he told in front of a national audience to stand back and stand by. >> i don't know who the proud boys are. you'll have to give me a definition because i really don't know who they are. >> good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, october 1st. along with joe, willie and me, we have a professor at princeton university eddie glaud jr. and ed luse.

>> you know, mika and willie, it's so interesting, isn't it, that he's saying the same thing now that he said as we've been talking about for four years, as he said before super tuesday in 2016 where he denied knowing who david duke was. i don't even know who david duke is. and, of course, back in 2000, there are quotes of him attacking david duke and saying he wouldn't be a reform party candidate because david duke was a racist and he didn't want to be in that party. and then he was even slippery about the klan. i can't really attack this group because i don't know what they're doing. and mika, here he goes doing the same thing again. >> listen, he gave them a very clear message to stand back and stand by and you could see him thinking, willie, in that debate how do i do this? how do i do this? because both chris wallace and joe biden were like, okay, go

ahead, denounce, say it, do it. do it. and he thought, how am i going to do this? and he didn't do it. >> he didn't do it and the semantic games some people are playing, well, he meant to say stand down and he used the wrong word or what the president is saying now, i don't even know who the proud boys are. the question was will you condemn white supremacists? and rather than saying of course i will he said, well, which ones? he wanted to get specific about which ones? and here he was yesterday, the president when asked about proud boys, he will hear echos of the sound bites mika just played for you. >> mr. president, what you said last night when you said that the proud boys should stand back and stand by? >> i don't know who the proud boys are. you'll have to give me a definition because i don't really know who they are. when you said stand by, did you mean -- >> just stand by. look, law enforcement will do their work. you they're going to stand down. they have to stand down.

>> white supremacists, they claim they love you and support you. do you welcome that? >> i want law and order to be a very important part -- it's a very important part of my campaign. and when i say that, what i'm talking about is law enforcement, the police have to take care and they should stop de funding the police like they've done in new york -- >> but i'm talking about white supremacists, sir. >> but do you denounce them? >> i've always denounced any form, any form, any form of any of that you have to denounce, but i also en -- joe biden has to say something about ant i fa. >> so he cannot, joe, just bring himself to say when he's first asked about white supremacists, will you denounce them, he gets to it eventually but first he has to give his speech about law and order and about where joe biden has fallen down again and again and again. in his political life for the last four years, i don't really know those people who i gave a tacit endorsement to or i'm

going to change the subject because i know they support me and i can't risk losing them. >> but you know what he didn't even do in that clip and what he can't do is say, when asked, do you condemn white supremacy, he will never say yes. >> right. >> oh, i'm against all of the violence on all sides, do you -- and as far as the white boys go, the proud boys goes, he knows who they are. i mean, the fbi is out once again saying that right wing extremism, white supremacy is one of the greatest dangers in america right now as far as domestic terrorism goes. but this happens, eddie, time and time again. will you condemn white supremacy? he will never say yes, i condemn white supremacy. and by the way, this is not a semantics game. this has been going on for four

years. and whether it's refuse to go condemn david duke at first, refusing to condemn the klan, then coming back and saying something is wrong with my ear piece, trying to clarify things. he was asked several times, do you condemn white supremacy? i condemn all of it. it's always generalized. he always try toes change the subject. he always goes to antifa or some left wing groups that are -- he wants to condemn. yesterday he talked about law enforcement. but will not come out and condemn white supremelists groups. >> yes, joe, and it seems to me that there's a reason why he won't condemn them. and it's something that we just need to say out loud. donald trump will not condemn white supremacists because he is one. and we can make that judgment not to rush to it. we can look at his policies.

we can look at his behavior. it's not just simply david duke, joe, it's the klan, every single time he has an opportunity to declare that these people are outside of the democratic process, that they should be condemned in an unqualified way, he dances, he skirts, and it has everything to do with, i believe, right, his alignment with these folks. the proud boys are proudly calling themselves western sh f chauvinists. they are pro white. they don't want to feel guilty about being white. when you think about what donald trump says about anti-racial bias training, when you think about how he deploys i.c.e. in particular sorts of ways, to my mind, joe, there's an alignment, there's a consistency here. so at the end of the day, donald trump will not condemn white supremacists because, in my mind, to me, he is one. >> well, and, again, it's not

just in your mind that he does these things. >> it's in the facts. >> it's objective. you can look at his own words. you can look at his actions. you can look at what he says is at campaign rallies. you can look at what he said even last night. and, again, when -- remember last summer, i believe it was, where he talked about they need to go back to their own country and i think he might have made that statement in minnesota last night, ed, he was back once again going after an american congresswoman and saying, tell her to fix her country. and it's that same sort of send them back to their country. they're not part of this country because they're the wrong color, because they're the wrong faith. and, my goodness, if -- again, if refuse to go condemn white nationalism and white nationalists and if attacking

the others the way donald trump attacks the others at rallies, and talking about great genes and the great gene pool of members in his white audiences is not facism, it certainly is an echo of facism. but i think that's being awfully generous to donald trump and those who defended him after charlotte, to those who were defending him even now. >> i think the best possible answer and explanation from trump's point of view, if you were a trump apologist, would be that he likes people who like him. but then that, of course, begs the question why is it that these far right white supremacist extremist groups like him? i don't think that that explanation serves at all. you just judge about his actions. you look at his attitudes and

policies on immigration. what he said probably unrepeatable on this show about african countries and immigrants from african countries as opposed to, you know, the blue eyed blond preferable immigrants from places like norway. so i -- my explanation would be that he also has sympathy with the people who like him. but in a sort of larger political sense, this is entirely self-destructive. he is going against every rule of a president or any other person seeking re-election, which is to branch out, to appeal to more moderate people, to add to your demographic coalition. he's on a kind of death wish here. i think he knows he's probably going to lose. he's been speaking in the past tense. he said he guys, meaning the media and particularly the networks are going to miss me. i'm sure you saw that tweet

yesterday afternoon. and he's saying if i'm going to go down, i'm going to take -- i'm going to take you down with me. i think there's a sort of death wish in his approach to this election that it is the mark of somebody who has a very dark mind. >> still ahead, we'll go to the white house for a reaction to tuesday night's debate and how the president views his own performance. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction with spray mopping to lock away debris and absorb wet messes, all in one disposable pad. just vacuum, spray mop, and toss. the shark vacmop, a complete clean all in one disposable pad. teeth sensitivity as well as gum issues. does it worry me? absolutely. sensodyne sensitivity & gum gives us the dual action effect that really takes care of both our teeth sensitivity as well as our gum issues. there's no question it's something that i would recommend.

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>> if he doesn't correct it, i guess he didn't misspeak. >> with regard to the white supremacy issue, i want to associate myself with the remarks of senator tim scott. he said it was unacceptable not to condemn white supremacists. so i do so in the strongest possible way.

>> he should unequivocally condemn white supremacy. >> he has been very clear that there is no place for racism in this country. >> did you think that mr. trump was presidential last night in the debate? >> i thought it was an embarrassment last night, the debate. >> did you watch the debate last night? >> sure did. >> what did you think? >> it was awful. >> president trump's allies, advisers privately are voicing concerns over his performance. this is the president missed repeated opportunities to hit vice president biden in areas they had prepared for like china and comments the former vice president has made in the past on race. people familiar with this tell nbc news the mood around the campaign and white house yesterday morning was worried, quiet and shock. the consensus mention people close to the campaign was the president's debate performance probably did not lose him any votes among his base, but he needed to do much more than hold his ground. according to the "new york times," the president was not

displeased with his own performance. three people close to the campaign told the times that president trump was elated as a debate and saw it as a successful outing. the "new york times" noting that some of president trump's advisers who shy away from giving him bad news made no attempt to disabuse the president of his assessment. meanwhile, a veteran senate strategist tells "the washington post" in part, quote, you're not going to see anybody say it was a bad performance, but they'll consider it like trump's crazy tweets. they'll say it's not my kind of campaign. didn't really see it. theyed added several campaigns are deliberating on how to address proud boys and how to de flect the issue and shut ift to more favorable topics for them. let's bring in nbc correspondent carol lee at the white house for us this morning. carol, reading through your report, it looks like there was

some preparation on substance and not only did the president in his performance blow it, but in his argument, he whiffed on some of the lines he was supposed to deliver. >> yeah. that was one of the more interesting things that we heard from people close to the president who helped him prepare who said, you know, he didn't really do any traditional preparation. he wasn't interested in spending a lot of time going over how he should respond to certain lines of attack or questioning or policy issues. but they did prep him with some pushbacks and he repeatedly just didn't go to them on a number -- so even the parts that he was prepared for, for instance when the 1994 crime bill was to come up about joe biden's support to that, the president was to point to alice johnson, a grandmother who spent years in prison who say in the audience and said you should apologize to her. and he didn't do that. he pivoted to his poll numbers

for african-americans and said he was the best president ever for the african-american community and that was something we saw when it kacame to the supreme court. he pivoted to health care and started criticizing the obama administration about that. so there's frustration among his advisers on a whole array of fronts, and then his refusal to go to places where they had prepared him to have these answers to some of these criticism or to at least hit back on biden in a way that might resinate more with voters. he just didn't do that. so looking forward to the next debate, what they're saying is this is a different format, they hope maybe he will do better, but they're resigned to the fact that he's not going to take advice or be told what to say or what to do and that's kind of the way they have to proceed. and there are some among the

president's team who are telling him, you know, ignore the controversy, plow ahead, secure your base, get out your vote and as you said, the recording was the best they can hope for coming out of the first debate is that he didn't lose anybody. but he needs to do a lot more than not lose anybody. he needs to actually gain new voters and there's a lot of concern that he didn't do that at all. in fact, he probably alienated some. >> and, carol, as you know, and i'm sure you can give us so many examples of this, donald trump does not allow criticism. he does not allow people to come in and tell him that he made the mistake. i think in one of the last phone calls we had with him, it was at the end of the first week, one of the last times we actually talked to him, it was into the first week of his presidency and he asked how it went. and i said, well, not too good. it was a little rough. and he was just enraged.

he was shocked. and it was very obvious after talking to him that absolutely nobody then and nobody now ever criticizes him, ever self-corrects him, ever gives him constructive advice. and, again, i'm sure you can give a hundred examples on of that, but what you're telling us here is that this is a president who really had a historically bad performance in the debate and actually lost voters. i saw somebody who was going to vote for him who is a prominent writer, writing a column that he could never vote for donald trump after watching the debate, that it was -- that it greatly damaged america. and, yet, carol, what you're saying and what we saw years ago is nobody can correct him. he's incapable of getting better between now and the next debate

because nobody will tell him the truth. >> yeah. and you only need to look at any of the president's advisers across the administration who have told him things he doesn't want to hear and he turns on them pretty quickly. there's a reason for this. you know, one of the things that some of the president's team wanted him to do and would like him to do next time, and who knows if he can do this, is to let biden talk. going into the debate, their argument was biden needs to have a gaffe. we need to just let him basically, you know, walk himself into forget background something or whatever, showing to something that feeds the narrative that they've tried to put out there, that he's not all there. and the president couldn't get out of his own way in terms of that. that is one of the repeated frustrations that some of the president's advisers have had with him throughout this process which is he thinks he knows best. that's always been true. but he's not willing to listen to anyone who thinks maybe he should try something differently or answer this way. and even if they do prep him,

he's not necessarily going to follow through with what they planned. >> nbc's carol lee, thank you very much. and coming up, america's bleeding democratic image. ed luce has reaction from around the world to the debate on tuesday and the president's ongoing assault against american institutions. - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction with spray mopping to lock away debris

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ed luce, we're talking about thunderstorm warning about how america's reputation is bleeding out in front 069 world. you look at everything that donald trump did in that debate and what he's been saying over the past month as -- as a russian aide told gq correspondent julia yafi about donald trump, this guy is doing our job for us. he's saying that american elections are rigged. he's constantly questioning american institutions.

the intelligence community, attacking american generals and admirals. again, undermining on full display of the world america's institutions and now even undermining the most basic thing that we've taken such great pride in. that is the peaceful transfer of power after elections. >> yeah. and i think that, you know, the failure to utter that line was probably the most important line of the night, if you will. you remember that the whole russian purpose in the last election was to just cast out on the integrity of the american system, just to tarnish american institutions, to bring america

down. it wasn't necessarily to bring about hillary's defeat. it wasn't just that they wanted her defeated, they wanted her to be badly wounded by hurting the process and poem's trust in the process. now that trump is doing that on a daily basis and refusing to talk about the sanitity of the vote, refusing to do as any other president of any party would have done which is to talk about the sacred rights to vote and declaring whole classes of votes, the mail-in ballots, what more does russia need to do? i think from a larger perspective, this is a celebration in china. there was a point during the debate where they said china had eaten your lunch during the obama administration because of

the rising u.s. trade deficit. which by the way, was at exactly the same level as it was in 2016. and it struck me then that watching this from beijing, this, you know, sort of almost -- this caricature of the ugly american, donald trump, indulging in demagoguery, not a debate, cha china was eating america's dinner. and eyeing the breakfast menu. that this is extraordinarily good news for a country that seeks to bring down democracy as the model others should follow as the quest of america has always led. just watch this debate. >> ed luce, thank you so much for coming on this morning. coming up, big dirty money.

a new book takes a hard look at the shocking injustice, an unseen cost of white collar crime. we'll talk to the author straight ahead on "morning joe."

this is our chance to put the darkness of the past four years behind us. to end the anger, the insults, the division. and start fresh in america. i don't pledge allegiance to red states of america or blue states of america. i pledge allegiance to the united states of america. i'm gonna fight as hard for those who supported me as those who did not support me. we have a chance to put anger and division that has overtaken this country behind us. and we can. we've done it so many times in our history. we begun anew. we can get control of this virus. we can reward work. we can make healthcare affordable. we can be a safe and just nation. we can deal with the existential threat of climate change. we can be what we are at our best.

one nation, one people, one america. i'm joe biden and i approve this message. others see cracked concrete, instrundown courts.ere.

i see a way to bring pride back to communities. that's why i made project backboard and a site with godaddy. how will you make your mark? make the world you want. his own head of cdc said if everyone wore a mask and social distanced between now and january, we would probably save up to 100,000 lives. it mattered. >> and they've also said the opposite. >> no serious person said the opposite. no serious person -- >> dr. fauci said the opposite. >> he did not say the opposite. >> larry -- >> we have a minute left in this segment. >> masks are not good. then he he changed his mind and he said masks are good. >>. >> donald trump repeating his claim that dr. fauci wavered in his stance on masks.

yesterday dr. fauci said the president is taking him out of context. he explained early on in the pandemic, officials did not recommend masks for the general public because they were concerned about a shortage for health officials. fauci said officials changed that guidance when they learned the virus could be spread by people without symptoms and when they learned cloth masks could stop it. >> meanwhile, president trump has scheduled two campaign rallies in wisconsin weekend despite warn eggs from his own coronavirus task force. "the washington post" obtained a task force errors urging a number of degrees possible. the state set a record for the number of icu stays and deaths.

bellen hospital in green bay says its hospital was at 94% capacity as of tuesday. the second wave is here and it is here with a veng vengeance, mika. and a new corn el university study finds that president trump is the leading driver of misinformation on the coronavirus. the leading driver. researchers examined nearly 38 million english language articles on the pandemic published from january 1st to may 26th. nearly 3% of those articles contained misinformation. and about 1.1 million articles. the president made up nearly 38% of mentions within the misinformation conversation as the study calls it. researchers found a prevalent topic of misinformation were miracle cures, including trump's

comments on anti-ma layeral drugs and disinfectants like this claim from back in april. >> and i see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. so it could be interesting to check that. >> okay. i just want to point out that he said in the debate that was him being sarcastic. nothing sarcastic about that presentation by the president. >> a day after trump floated that claim, under 30,000 articles were published under the quote miracle cure. joining us now, jeremy meters, author of "winners take all,"

gary dartus and associate professor at fordham university, christina grier. great to have you all on board. let's talk about the spread of disinformation and how that is part of a bigger picture when it comes to dictator wanna-bes or autocratic wanna bes. this is what trump most facts will tell you is the spread of misinformation muddles up the discourse and it gets to a point where nobody knows what is true. we're not there yet, but, boy, it's coming close to the election and he's even doing it to the election. >> i think you're absolutely right. and what tuesday night revealed is this election contest is no longer a principal contest between joe biden and donald

trump. it is a contest between a wanna be dictator who wants to do a coup for one and an election about we the people and what we choose. and he has set up clearly that he is running against the process of people choosing. if that is your strategy, it becomes all the more important to tell people when those waters are so muddy, when they are hearing those votes are not to be counted, that this is not to be confused with the idea that they don't have power. if you look at other countries that go through this, your father worked on these leaders trying to do these kind of shenanigans. people have more power than they ever have had before and the

people who have the most power now are apolitical people, people who passed up the opportunity to vote for 10, 20, 30 years. and those folks, people who feel like it's all a game for the moneyed. and there's truth in a lot of those feelings. those people, i want to say to you you have tremendous power to cut through this disinformation and assert your power to choose a destiny in which women are not getting forced hysterectomies in concentration camps, in which young kids are not waiting in food banks in lines to go to school, you have more power than you ever of had any any election. >> as someone who studies and teaches political science, what you thought just about the

process, forget the moments and the rudeness, but about where our political process and what kind of a statement that night made about it. >> it was quite embarrassing. while i was watching, i was looking at a whatsapp for my students. i have only 3 1/2 months to get 18, 19 and 20-year-olds invested in their own democracy, thinking of themselves as public servants one day in a mead yar of local, federal and state government. the behavior that they witnessed, knowing that they would never be able to behave in such a way at a university setting or at a job. and to know the international community is looking at us, the

emperor has no clothes, and just a pure disbelief in facts. i always tell my students, we must read to know what happened in the past and to better inform our decisions. this is a man who proudly says he does not read. he just knows things. sadly, we have 210,000 americans who have died. 210,000 families and communities without loved ones. keep in mind, these numbers are riding. and to see young people so disgusted in disbelief in this system, i have a limited time to get them invested. it has made my job much more difficult. but i think there are enough good public servants out there who are working to help distill the misinformation that the president and his party put out

on a daily basis. >> so jeremy peters, your most recent piece talks about trump supporters and his unwillingness to say i will transfer power peacefully. he's been muddying those waters, as well. they say good performance by our guy, we like what he did, the way he performed. when you put those together, what did he see? >> i think what this sets up given trump's refusal to say he would leave office in a peaceful transfer of power is an incredibly messy situation after the election if indeed the ballots aren't counted and we have a situation where we don't know who the winner of the presidential election is. i think that is what makes this election so different and what makes trump's claims of voter fraud, you know, the idea of ballot harvesting, all of this, these falsehoods he's put out there about the safeness of

voting, that's why they're so dangerous now. ite likely given the prevalence of mail-in voting in this election, we're not going to know on election night. and that's a situation that voters haven't really processed in their heads. and when we talk to them over the weekend and over the last few days, one thing they all said was, you know, every election night for as long as i've been alive, go to bed, wake up and we know who the president is the next day. that may not be the case this time. so when you have president trump talking about ballots being stolen or filled out with false names or dead people getting them and it's created this uncertainty and this doubt that his supporters, who are already pretty susceptible to this, to believe that the election is actually much less safe than we know it to be right now.

so when they hear him say i'm not going to agree right now on the spot to leave office peacefully, it actually makes sense to his voters. it sounds to him like they're saying, well, we're going to wait and count this out. but that doesn't sound like what he's saying. what he's saying is the only way i can lose is if this election is stolen from me and that's something no president has ever said before. >> people are voting now. what are you looking at? what are you watching and what concerns you the most? >> i think the biggest crisis that we face right now, you know, the people who like fascism should not be the object of our persuasive energies right now. there are a lot of decent people who may be unwittingly enabling

what jeremy was just describing. and it's important to think about what those folks need to do. so i think for those of us in the media, frankly, whether it's headlight r headline writers, whether it's people putting things on tv and deciding how to frame things, it's very important to understand this is a decisive frontal assault on the idea that we should elect a president democratically. that is not something any working journalist has frankly covered, even if they were 200 years old. and so it's new rules. and i know folks in the media who are struggling with this. how do we tell this story? how do we defend the integrity of a process? it's really hard. i think the old rules don't work. facebook, i have very little hope for a moral redemption or epiphany at facebook. but if you are a decent person at facebook, you have to realize you are the new fox news of 2020

except you're wired into people's brains and reaching them in their pockets at all hours of the day. you need to think about the fact that your mat form, which mark zuckerberg invented i think because he wanted to meet girls is becoming the platform to spread misinformation and hate. whether it's public donors, ceos, a lot of people need to think about the fact that you may be enabling the actual shattering of american democracy. >> christina grier, same question to you. and do you agree with that? >> oh, i completely agree. and what i will add is every election cycle, we have about 40% of the voting eligible population cho choses not to participate in their own democracy and come out and vote, largely because they're frustrated with the two-party system or they don't stee that voting will make a difference in

their lives. many people don't understand that all 435 members of the house are on the ballots, judges and das are on the ballot cross the country. those offices matter so much to people's daily lives and to the finances of lives, what keeps me up at night is the consensus. that will have long standing effects for at least a decade. so the frustration with the disinformation and the misinformation is it keeps so much people at home. we know there's voter suppression, we have a white nationalist president calling on vigilantes to come and watch the polls. so many people in the media fundamentally do not understand race or racism and so there's a lot of both sidesisms when

there's a discussion about the party. we have a president who cannot say i disavoi white supremacy. we have to in the media are dis this election we let every mench know the threat to our democracy. it's not just children in cages. it's not just women being sterilized. it's not just black americans being attacked by police officers and white vigilantes who have nothing to do with their state. it's everyone who is in danger and it's -- we are an imperfect democracy but we have been moving in the right direction. and donald trump for his own selfish reasons is very happy to take us back several decades, especially if it will enrich him and help him stay in office because he's facing criminal and civil charges in several places for several misdeeds whilst in office and in the past. >> jeremy, we know the reason president trump is floating all of this garbage about the

election being rigged and not being able to trust mail-in voting saying it's fraudulent is because he looks at the polls very closely. he's obsessed with them and sees he's not doing well. he's trailing in battleground states that he won by a sliver last time around. do his supporters that you talk to as you've been writing these pieces, do they accept he's behind? do they accept the very real possibility that he may not be re-elected? >> no. and that's one of the most interesting dynamics we're facing in this election is because of the geographical separation that people have from one another of different political views often these days, they don't know anybody who is not voting for trump. so on election day or election week, whenever we know who the winner of the presidential election is if it's not donald trump, there's a sizable chunk of people who are going to say, how is this possible? i don't know anyone who is voting for biden. that's why it's so important for trump and his pro-trump media

boosters to insist that he's doing so well. that he's winning. winning is such a key part of the trump brand. so even after a night like tuesday night where you had members of his own campaign staff and white house staff really shaking their heads at his performance, the message coming out of them publicly at least was the president really killed it. he was in an unfair fight against two people debating him. the moderator and joe biden. so, you know, he really beat the spread. we think he did a great job under such trying circumstances and the media is going to lie 20 to you. that's why it's so important to put that narrative out there. if you are a trump voter, it's better for you to be energized and mobilized by the sense, false as it is, that you're winning. and that's something that i talk to democrats and they're really worried about because democrats don't, for the most part, have

the same sense of energy and momentum. in fact, they're quite anxious they might lose. and i think that that's something that, frankly, trump has an advantage on. >> jeremy peters, anan anang giridharadas and christina greer. our next guest is out with an expose about a costly crime wave that undermines our democracy. professor of law at the western new england university school of law jennifer taub joins us now. her new book "big dirty money." the shocking injustice and unseen cost of white collar crime. it's great to have you back on the show. one of your key points is that cheating is the new normal. i think i know exactly what you're talking about, and doesn't it start right at the top because there's been so much that has happened in the past four years that has just blown by us with seemingly no

recourse. >> you're absolutely right. and when you say the top, i mean the very top. right now we are in the middle of this white collar crime epidemic. unfortunately as you said, that's true. cheating is the new normal for people like donald trump. i formally believe if he had ever been held accountable for the many offenses he committed before he ran for office, he would have served time in federal prison instead of the oval office. >> hey, jennifer. it's willie. congratulations on the book. there's been sort of this attitude toward white collar crime that, well, you know, it's just money. they lost some money but those obviously destroyed people's lives. a lot more than a kid who was caught selling or possessing a nickel bag or something like that who was prosecuted. so can you speak to how big this problem is, and to 2008 and the financial crisis. did it change the way at least

law enforcement and prosecutors look at white collar crime? >> sure, willie. nice to see you again. this is a gigantic problem. there are more victims of white collar crime than there are of street crime. and i just want to point out, we've been hearing donald trump talk a lot about law and order. and he's always decrying this call for defunding the police. but let's be absolutely clear about this. he's not for law and order when it comes to the white wealthy and well connected. the irs in charge of auditing and enforcing our tax laws has had its budget cut substantially. it's down $2 billion from ten years ago. they have 30,000 fewer employees, and that means they're doing fewer audits. there's this thing called a tax staff which is the difference between what is really owed by people and what gets collected, and it gets bigger and bigger. it's now at $800 billion.

is it any wonder he's been under audit for all these years? so when we talk about to even put the -- tax fraud. some people think that's a victimless crime but it's not. when cities and towns and states and the federal government is deprived of tax dollars, we see the real effects. we don't have funding for roads, for schools. we don't have the ability to get people back to work. keep people safe during a pandemic because everyone cries out we don't have enough resources. >> so would the lack of prosecution after the financial crisis of 2008, which has been highlighted by a lot of people, is that as simple as it seems? rich guys, powerful, well-connected, big lawyers, got off clean? or was there something else at play there? >> yeah, glad you brought me back to that. i'm very skeptical about the excuses that we're given for the failure to prosecute any high-level bankers after the

2008 crisis. this broke with a very important pattern we had in this country. previously when there was a big white-collar crime wave there was also a crackdown. look to the savings and loan debacle of the 1980s where a thousand bankers went to jail. you can look at the accounting scandals. you probably remember enron. and when the government put money behind it an enron task force led by no other than andrew weissmann, people were held accountable across many firms at the highest levels. so when it came to 2008, you know, of course, i was not a fly on the wall. i did not hear internal conversations, but look at how it was talked about, i'll never forget when lanny breuer who worked at the department of justice in charge of enforcement went to television and misstated the law. he told the public the reason why they didn't bring any charges against bankers is because they had to prove this element of a crime. he said they had to prove that folks relied on these lies that were told about these classic

mortgage securities. but, in fact, that's not even an element of the crime. you might remember a scathing piece in the new york review of books. i'm skeptical if the guy in charge of this doesn't know what he has to prove didn't spend a lot of time telling folks this was a priority. toward the end of the obama administration, they stepped up and did start to enforce thee white collar criminal laws and try to hold individuals accountable. and that was when sally yates was the deputy attorney general. and that was great, but then trump came to office and he spends his time pardoning people and not -- in the white collar criminal enforcement has really declined. >> the new book is "big dirty money: the shocking injustice and unseen cost of white collar crime." jennifer taub, thank you so much. as we close out this morning, i want to let you know,

we have a very busy week at know your value.com. a really deep dive into mental health. it's part of our month-long kyb pandemic reset. and we're looking at mental health and this pandemic, how widespread it is and who is impacted. we have a powerful piece by a young woman i know very well from bronxville, new york, who ran on the track team with my daughters who is turning grief into action after the loss of her father during this pandemic. daniela peer bravo breaks down how covid-19 is taking a harsh mental toll on young adults and given the increase in social isolation during this pandemic, dr. jillian galen on what you should do to find out if you need to take steps for your own mental health. that and much more at know your value.com. and finally, a happy birthday to former president jimmy carter. happy birthday, president carter. your life is an example to turn

to during these trying times. we wish you and roslyn well and amy and the rest of the family. happy birthday. jimmy carter is 96. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's thursday, october 1st. let's get smarter. we're in the home stretch of the presidential campaign. can you believe it? just 33 days to go before the election. while 33 states are already voting as we speak. this morning, president trump in damage control mode while joe biden hitting the campaign trail. covid deaths are on the rise and jobless claims are adding up. in fact, 837,000 new claims were reported, less than an hour ago. and that could be just the tip of the iceberg. with federal funding running out today and the economy still struggling, big companies like disney and american airlines say they'll have to lay off tens