to be a third one? >> they're planning for it, that's always been their posture. they're planning for debates because of the president's shall we say unique and changing behavior on whether or not he wants to engage in it -- in a debate. you mentioned the town hall for the third one. that -- initially the town hall was supposed to be the second debate. what you're hearing from the biden camps they think having a town hall approach should be the third debate now which would be the final one. which would be the october 22nd debate. right now that's scheduled more as a podium lectern debate. inside the biden camp there's likely a push to lead it more towards the town hall format, not the one-on-one that we saw for the first one. you know, the biden campaign jumped on this, the president called in to fox news and said this is silly and you had the

campaign manager say, let's shift things around to october 29th and then a statement from kate bedingfield from the biden campaign, well, biden was in the air we'll only agree to what we said to the commission. >> it's a mess. stick around. we'll see you on "morning joe" and you guys can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com. thanks for getting up "way too early" on a friday morning. "morning joe" starts right now. well, the president is shall we say in an altered state right now. so i don't know how to answer for his behavior. >> so it's been a very interesting journey, i learned a lot about covid. i'm better, maybe i'm immune. don't let it dominate your lives. i feel great, i feel perfect. i think this was a blessing from god that i caught it. this was a blessing in disguise. these people should be indicted.

this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country and that includes obama and it includes biden. >> well, i'd like to come back to the white house soon to do another interview, mr. president. i'd love come to come back to the white house i saw it up close and -- >> -- indicted for terminating 33,000 emails from congress. i think there would be a chance i would catch it. sometimes i would be in groups of, for instance, gold star families. i didn't want to cancel that they come within an inch of my face sometimes. they want to hug me and kiss me. and they do. and frankly, i'm not telling them to back up. i'm not doing it. i don't think i'm contagious at all. and this monster that was on stage with mike pence who destroyed her last night, by the way, but this monster, she knows, no there won't be fracking, there won't be this. everything she said is a lie. i don't believe the polls

because we never had this much support. thousands of trucks all over the country. i took over the depleted military, old equipment, broken equipment. even in the army, brand-new uniforms with the belt, everyone wanted the belt. we are taking care of our seniors. you're not vulnerable but you're the least vulnerable, but for this one thing, you are vulnerable. so am i. they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water, to be honest with you. >> the president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now so i don't know to answer for his behavior. >> what a week it's been. it was exactly one week ago that president trump went public with his covid diagnosis. now he says he's ready to return to the campaign trail, maybe as soon as tomorrow. >> so willie, you know, mika and

i, we have rules before we come on this show. i'm not allowed to talk about baseball for long periods of time. >> no. >> nor am i allowed to talk about our lost decade in turkey, you and me. >> there's my rule too. >> what a decade that was, by the way. >> okay. >> but for her, i'm not allowing her to utter the phrase 25th amendment, you know, because every morning she has wanted to utter -- >> been right all along. >> i say, honey, you can't say that every day. and she says, honey, i can if i feel like it. well, willie, here we have the president saying he's immune. we have the president of the united states pressuring his attorney general -- republicans please listen, pressuring his

attorney general to indict his opponent who is beating anymore the polls to indict the last democratic opponent. to indict the last democratic president, saying he'll be a sad man if he doesn't do it. and trump say he'll have to basically do it himself if he gets re-elected. blames gold star families for giving him covid. says i'm not contagious despite the fact he wouldn't tell sean hannity repeatedly last night when his last test was. whether he's been tested or negative. he calls kamala harris, the vice presidential nominee for the democratic party calls her a monster, calls her a communist. talks about when he became president he had to give the army new uniforms, with belts. everybody likes the belts. he returned to the white house when doctors didn't want him to return to the white house.

he went to the west wing when people inside the white house were begging him to not go to the west wing. now he's talking about going out on the campaign trail when no doctor that was worth a damn would allow him to go out on the campaign trail. somebody -- i guess this is a sad indictment or just a sad statement on his life. he doesn't have anybody close enough to him that loves him enough, that he trusts enough, that can keep him from continuing to destroy himself and politically destroying his campaign and destroying republicans across the country. tell him he needs to sit down and yes, he's on steroids, he's still on steroids that are -- that would make our loved ones take extra care. >> but they'd have to take time off. >> in what we do, because of the

impact it would have, especially if we were just coming off of our covid or if we still had covid. there is nothing normal about this. he's not -- he does not sound like he's equipped right now to be president of the united states. and may not be until his steroid treatment runs its course. george w. bush turned over the presidency during procedures to dick cheney twice and it's happened before. it happened with ronald reagan. and i think it's safe for a lot of americans, safe for a lot of americans to say, shouldn't this guy just take a rest for a week and let mike pence assume the presidency until he gets better? >> as long as mike pence is okay. >> if mike pence is okay. we don't know that right now either. >> yeah, you cannot listen to our watch those two interviews, book ended first in the morning

with maria bartiromo and then sean hannity, and you cannot think that his brain is working right right now. and blaming the gold star families floating the idea that he might have caught it in the east room on sunday. i point out that was the day after the supreme court event in the rose garden which most doctors and tracing experts have looked at as the sort of vector, as the event, the super spreader event. he's talking about an event the next day, in the white house, blaming gold star families for giving him coronavirus. the second is attacking michigan governor gretchen whitmer on the same day that a plot was revealed to kidnap her and possibly murder her. he's attacking that governor on that day because she was critical of the president in her remarks. so taken in total, yesterday, then you add in the taped videos which honestly if you're the white house media team or the video team, how do you let those

go out? don't you say, mr. president, let's stop and try that again. we're doing this on tape. it was rambling, it made no sense. it was -- it was -- the whole day was a complete mess and again, not as a political statement, but as an american, you don't want your president looking and sounding like that. >> no, i can't even imagine the national security implications of this white house right now and you asked about the media team. they have covid. maybe interns were running the show, i don't know. along with joe, willie and me, we have the white house reporter from the associated press, jonathan lemire, capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early" kasie hunt. pulitzer prize winning columnist, eugene robinson. and from axios, hans nichols. >> so jonathan lemire, if things weren't bad enough, you and i

may be facing the decision on whether to cheer for the houston astros or the new york yankees in the alcs if the yankees end up beating tampa. that would be kind of like going into maguire's irish pub in pensacola, florida and seeing chairman mao arm wrestling. who do you root for? and here the yankees versus the astros. what do we do? >> well, i liken it to the measles versus the mumps and i'm still on that, unfortunately. certainly we hope as a nation we rally around the much beloved tampa bay rays to ward off that potential yankees/astros alcs. i'll note this, that the astros

of course were -- after being accused of cheating for years, spent this whole season not playing in front of fans. therefore, not facing the boos, the wrath of the other fan bases to punish them for their cheating ways. they played in front of empty stadiums and now they're just four wins away from a world series, on a neutral site, texas. some fans are being allowed into the game and the astros might have a semblance of a home field advantage in the world series were they to get there. but having said that, i would still root for them over the yankees obviously. >> really? you guys would root for the cheaters over america's team, that's shocking to me, jonathan. >> oh, boy. >> yes. it's my whole life. >> wow. well, so jonathan, tell me, we'll move from the grudge match between mao and stalin and talk about the events of yesterday.

donald trump, unmoored, he has been unmoored repeatedly but yesterday was so disturbing. i heard from republicans who were deeply concerned that he was going to -- just finish things off with less than a month to go. i'm sure you were hearing much the same throughout the day. also from white house officials. tell us the very latest not only on the president's disturbing remarks, you know, talking about -- again, in america, ordering his attorney general to arrest his political opponent so he doesn't lose an election and blaming gold star families for catching covid. >> well, let's start this, joe, no one has laid eyes on the president since his return from walter reed medical center monday evening. yes, the white house has released a couple of the videos, he's done a few phone interviews

and we're getting incomplete information from the white house doctors, from his own physician. the release last night he could potentially resume working activities as of saturday, return to the normal schedule, still does not include the idea of when his last negative test was before the diagnosis or whether he's tested negative since the diagnosis. is he indeed still contagious and it would seem most medical experts would believe he would be and this is an extraordinary rush to work. the aides are eyeing early next week for a tentative return to the campaign trail. small events in pennsylvania and perhaps on tuesday. and he's talking about major rallies in florida and on saturday, potentially pennsylvania on sunday. events that would not only be unsafe for those traveling on air force one traveling with him if he's still contagious but there's a real question if he'd be healthy enough to do that. to be up there for an hour, 90

minutes or more and of course he'll come into contact with people backstage and at the rally as well. and yes, you laid it out perfectly at the beginning of the show. he is furious with his attorney general, william barr. what is the first re really rid is. there's those connected close to joe biden and frustrated with secretary of state pompeo because he hasn't done more with the hillary clinton email investigation four years out. he's frustrated with the state of the race. he knows he's trailing and he has been deprived of running the campaign he wants because the pandemic has overshadowed everything else. there's real second-guessing about his decision to blow up the second debate, suggesting if his campaign had initially just suggested a postponement like where they eventually said, hey, let's have two debates but push

them back a week, therefore to allay any sort of health concerns maybe the debate commission and the biden camp would have gone for that. by saying initially we don't want to do it, we're going to pull out of the potential remote debate, it gave the biden camp no incentive to agree. the biden camp was able to say, hey, we're sticking to the schedule. we certainly know as the last point, republicans terrified that the bottom might be dropping out. a depression in enthusiasm among the trump base which might not only sink him in the white house but absolutely bring the senate down with him. >> so, okay, on that note, i'm going to change plans and we'll play that sound bite in a moment. a sound bite that will show the president of the united states completely unhinged. a president of the united states calling for the arrest of his opponent in the race for the white house and very upset with other high-ranking member of the administration and in washington and we will get to the gravity

of the story of the botched attempt to kidnap the governor of michigan. yes, i just said that and we need to talk about all of that and the president's influence on white supremacists, but first, kasie, jonathan lemire just talked about republicans and there has been a bit of a crack, finally just a tiny crack came through. i believe it was out of the mouth of mitch mcconnell yesterday. >> indeed, mika. i think you're talking attack fact that he said publicly that he had not gone to the white house since august 6th because the reality is the white house doesn't take the same precautions that he takes in the senate in terms of dealing with the coronavirus. and mitch mcconnell we should remember survived polio as a child and has always been marked by that experience and he has been someone who has been telling americans from the beginning to wear a mask.

let's watch what he said yesterday. >> i haven't actually been to the white house since august the 6th because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different from mine and what i insisted that we do in the senate, which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing. >> and all of those pictures of those indoor events at the white house show this very thing and that is not -- there are certain senators that disregard occasionally what mitch mcconnell has put in place but he does not and his top leadership aides do not either. the fact he said that i think is extraordinarily remarkable. it's an acknowledgment of the writing on the wall in terms of the politics of this. it shows that mitch mcconnell recognizes just how bad things are with president trump and the political imperative, not just

the public health imperative, but also the political imperative to say, look, i need to put some distance between where i am on this and where the president is on this. and as we have documented very carefully on this show over the last going on four years, that is an unusual circumstance. >> and speaking of unusual circumstances, gene, we have so much being thrown at us right now. we could talk about the president and his health. we could talk about doctors lying about the doctor's president, we can talk about the american people being lied to nonstop by the president, his medical team. we could talk about the infections that are ripping through the white house, that are crippling government. we could talk about the chairman of the joint chiefs and the rest of the joint chiefs being sent away and lock themselves away because of it. we can talk about that, but i think it's important to focus on three things that have happened

over the last 24 hours. one, the vice president refused to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power, after the president had been refusing to do the same. refusing to guarantee a peaceful transfer of power. number two, you have the president of the united states trailing badly in the polls, demanding -- demanding that his attorney general that he appointed arrest his political opponent with less than a month to go in the campaign. and then of course also to arrest all of his other perceived political enemies. his last democratic opponent, the last democratic president of the united states. it is -- that is not something that suggests the wishes of an

autocratic leader, that is just what an autocratic leader does, that's what a tyrant does and it's happening here in america. third and finally, we have a president who inspired a group of terrorists, domestic terrorists, to kidnap the governor of michigan and they believe they were quote, liberating michigan, as donald trump instructed in a tweet early in the spring and then we're going to try for her crimes against the state in wisconsin and that's -- that's where we are right now with the trump presidency. and those three things alone are enough, should shock the conscience of every person who is thinking about voting for donald trump and force them to reassess and ask really whether

they want their democracy to continue the way it has continued over the past 240 years. >> right. what kind of country do you want to live in? i mean, those things, those three events you listed are unacceptable and disqualifying. they're simply disqualifying for donald trump and mike pence who, frankly, i thought had more sense and political sense than to echo donald trump's refusal to accept the idea, the reality, that has to be of a peaceful transfer of power if they lose which it looks like they will lose. of course, you know, the superlatives, never seen anything like this before, never heard anything like this before

we can go on and on. but it's all true. this can't be happening in the united states of america. this cannot be the president of the united states of america sounding like this, looking like this and acting like this. and i just think it's -- it's shocking and at a point where we didn't think we could be shocked anymore. but this is -- this is shocking and just -- let me just add one thing. the refusal of the white house to do proper contact tracing on what is now certainly the biggest covid outbreak happening in the district of columbia and maybe in the tri-state area here. the refusal to call in the cdc and do proper contact tracing is putting people's lives at risk. it is putting countless people's

lives at risk. it's just extraordinary. it's extraordinary. >> they're doing that to cover up their stupidity or the lack of care or the lack of ability to follow science. >> exactly. because they're lying. >> right. >> they're lying about when he got covid, when he was tested. they're just lying. >> mika, again, just to underline it, the president of the united states called for the arrest of his political opponent less than one month out, when he's trailing badly in the polls. and ordering his attorney general to arrest his political opponent. this has never happened in america. >> right. >> this is -- this is what happens in russia. this is what happens in china. this is what happens in -- with tyrannical leaders and

tyrannical governments. this is what happens in turkey. this is what happens in countries that don't have our heritage and, yet, donald trump, again, calling for the arrest of his political opponent less than a month out. you can't say it enough. it's a shocking development and if every republican senator doesn't come out and blast the president for doing this, well, then that's on them. >> it's also dangerous. we're in a very dangerous place right now. hans nichols has new some reporting on and this we'll get to that in a moment. the president's doctor released a memo yesterday claiming that trump had been symptom free for more than 24 hours but last night it appeared he was still showing symptoms. although it's important to keep in mind that people cough. i cough, we cough on the air, sometimes we have to clear our throats so we have to be

careful. but listen to the president in his interview with sean hannity who kept asking him, when were you last tested. in the context of his covid diagnosis it seems he's potentially in some respiratory distress. >> the last time i had a big problem, they isolated my mics -- three debates with hillary and i think the first debate they -- >> yeah. >> excuse me, on the first debate they oscillated the mic. >> will you encourage your voters to get out and vote? >> i want them to vote and that's okay but absentee ballots -- excuse me, absentee ballots are fine because you request. >> that was donald trump with sean hannity. there was an entire cottage industry looking at the way that

hillary clinton coughed at some of her events in 2016 and were reading into that. let's bring in dr. vin gupta who has been treating covid patients for some seven, eight months. great to see you this morning. i want to zero in on something you pointed out yesterday which is that this window that the president is talking about, if he was diagnosed on thursday night he believes and his dr. conley has now said he can go out and do events tomorrow on saturday, they're looking at ten-day window but you point to a 20-day window for a patient with the symptoms that president trump has shown. can you explain that a little bit? >> good morning, willie. happy to, especially for the benefit of the american people because examples matter. presidential examples matter. and so this is the thinking here. the president we know has severe covid-19 pneumonia. i have gotten pushback how do

you know that in the absence of the lung scan, i'm a pulmonologist we deal with this all the time. he has shortness of breath and he's getting treatment as though he has covid-19 pneumonia. that's all consistent. he has the diagnosis. you're right, there's lots of reasons for a cough but he's just getting over pneumonia, it is all consistent. in that clinical stem, his own cdc issues a guideline saying you need 20 days of isolation if you have had severe consequences from covid-19 pneumonia or severe covid-19 pneumonia, the classical definition, meaning even if he's symptom free it doesn't matter. he can still be shedding virus for up to 20 days after the on set of symptoms so the earliest he should be in any way engaging with anybody outside of a bubble in the white house, masked, distanced, of course, in any case, he's towards the end of

this month. certainly not tomorrow and it's unconscionable that his doctor is willing to put a white coat behind this crazy notion that ten days is enough, it's not. and it's sending a wrong message to the american people that ten days after a severe infection is good enough, number one, that symptom resolution is any useful metric. we know that's not useful when it comes to viral shedding if you have had the infection. so it's misinformation and the doctor himself should not be sanctioning this because he's promoting misleading information to the american public. >> yeah. the doctor yesterday cleared the president to do events tomorrow, which is actually nine days since his diagnosis. but dr. gupta, what are you missing in this picture? we heard sean hannity to his credit pushing the president, have you had a negative test, when is the last negative test and he gave no answer, doctors will not answer that question. we don't know that he hasn't had a recent negative test, but he's

had a negative test at all. what else do you need to see as a physician on that medical chart? >> candidly, there's been a lot of focus on the last negative test. that stem, plus we cared for many patients, my colleagues and i are that are 74 or even younger, frankly, with comorbidities once they test positive and they have had covid-19 pneumonia and they need hospitalization, sometimes they test positive up to 55 days after their initial diagnosis so he might not have a negative test for a long time which is one wherein they don't want to talk about it. number two, it's not that useful to understand when he's not a harm to other people. we think and willie, this is the science here, that if you're otherwise healthy, you have mild symptoms, and you're young, we think that maybe you stop being infectious to others at about eight to ten days.

but if you're older, you have had a severe manifestation it's 20 days and the last test doesn't really matter. he might test positive for many, many weeks. >> all right. dr. gupta, on that point, and the fact that the president could still be quite ill, here is, you don't have to be shocked, the analysis is this is incredibly dangerous. here is the president of the united states calling for the arrest of joe biden. he lashes out at wray, pompeo as well. take a listen. >> unless bill barr indicts and these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we're going to get little satisfaction unless i win and we'll just have to go. because i won't forget it. but these people should be indicted. this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country and that includes obama and it includes biden.

and these are people that spied on my campaign and we have everything. >> address christopher wray. will you replace him in a second term? >> well, i don't want to say that yet. he's been disappointing. he talks about, you know, even the voting thing, like he doesn't see the voting ballots as a problem. there are thousands of ballots right there, you pick up any paper in the country practically and they're cheating all over the place on the ballots. how is that not a problem? that's a much bigger problem than china or russia. 33,000 emails. she got -- forget about what was on the emails it's irrelevant. although many of them were classified, highly classified. you'd go to jail for that, but they're in the state department, but mike pompeo has been unable to get them out which is very sad, actually, i'm not happy about him for that. for that reason. he was unable -- i don't know why. you're running the state department, get them out. >> if you're watching and trying to keep score at home, first of

all, he calls again for the arrest of joe biden and he calls for the arrest of his last democratic opponent, he calls for the arrest of the last democratic president. he attacks america's election system, american democracy says it's worse than china or russia. he attacks mike pompeo for not releasing hillary clinton's emails. he attacks christopher wray and he claims something that is a total, absolute lie and of course he's lying repeatedly about the america's electoral process being rigged. he did it again there. but he's also lying about having all of the evidence he needs to indict obama and biden simply because there's been one ig report after another showing that what he's been talking about since march of 2017 is a complete fabrication, a conspiracy theory. something that of course will be

embraced in the internet, but that no self-respecting law enforcement officer will ever pay heed to because it's an absolute lie. but hans nichols, the president completely unmoored, attacking again not just his opponents, not just saying that joe biden should go in jail -- go to jail and that kamala harris is a monster, but also attacking his secretary of state, his fbi director and his attorney general for not jailing all of his political opponents. >> and what axios is reporting this morning, joe, that the attorney general bill barr is telling top republicans the indictments aren't going to come before the election. this big durham report that's been out there in the ether that people have been wondering about when is it going to come, what does it mean, you just mentioned

that the president has evidence and it was clear there's some malfeasance, on the russian investigations, he may think that, i don't know. but the attorneys don't think they have enough evidence for convictions and that's not to say that durham isn't moving forward. but their goal isn't tied to the time line in terms of the presidential race. they're thinking about how they can win in court. and the president's apparently upset with. that he wants something before hand. you know, real quick. so much reporting on the trump white house is listening closely to what he's saying and trying to figure out what set him off, he calls in to maria bartiromo and you can do the tick tock, well, clearly he got some news on bill barr and on mike pompeo. that's what my colleague elena treene did on what set the president off and it looks like there's no indictments. jonathan at the a.p. you want to

throw it forward, but you listen and you go back and there's some sort of change inside the administration. >> and i mean, it's -- he's so revelatory to the world around us. everyone can see how much of a day trader he is in his thinking and they can understand what's going on too. not good. let's bring in david aramberg on for his analysis. >> yes dave, on the state level, let's say there were a democratic governor and he announced, you know, less than a month before a gubernatorial election where a republican was beating him by 10, 12, 15 points he started pressuring use a state attorney to bring charges against that republican gubernatorial candidate, we know what everybody would say.

whether it's the st. pete times, pensacola news journal, they all would be calling for his resignation because it's a shameful act. talk about as a prosecutor and as somebody who has studied this your entire life, talk about, if you will, the consequences of a chief executive of the united states of america calling for the arrest of his political opponents less than one month before an election where he's expected to lose. >> joe, it's actually pretty common in countries that have dictators to jail their political opponents. remember, he has an affinity for erdogan in turkey. in russia, vladimir putin does it all the time. kim jong-un jails them and kills them, so he's going into that

tyrant mode and even bill barr, trump's fixer, will not do this because he knows that trump is trailing in the polls and he won't be there to protect him if he commits crimes. so he's going to say no. and he knows that as a prosecutor, you cannot file charges based on russian propaganda. the whole thinking that hillary clinton and her administration or her team like biden and all the others were behind the russia probe comes from russian intelligence. it was so ridiculous that even the republicans in the senate intelligence committee rejected it. which is crazy because mike pence still promoted it at the vice presidential debate the other night. so even bill barr is not going to go this far. you know, the problem for bill barr in being president trump's fixer, he's going to be asked occasionally to do something

illegal and there are only two choices, yes or no. if he says yes, he's likely to end up in a prison cell like michael cohen. if he says no, he's likely to end up humiliated like jeff sessions. there is no door number three. so he's stuck. he bought the ticket and now he's got to take the ride. >> wow. >> dave, stay with us for this story -- go ahead, joe. >> go ahead, willie, i was going to say, except for the fact that bill barr and everybody else in the white house knows that this mafia-style presidency is going to be coming to an end sooner rather than later and everything they're doing right now is going to be examined for the next several years and could actually place -- they could place themselves in jeopardy if they break the law or come close to breaking the law. >> yeah. joe, we talked about this story briefly at the top of the show, breathtaking, 13 men were arrested yesterday on multiple state and federal charges for an

alleged plot to kidnap michigan governor gretchen whitmer. with the assistance of an informant, six were charged in the federal indictment and seven under state law. all members of the two extremist groups that federal investigators have been tracking since march. nbc news learned if six suspects used encrypted messaging to communicate about the alleged plot, conducting coordinated surveillance on the governor's vacation home and detonating an improvised device with shrapnel. the seven who were arrested blame to the wolverine watchman and their goal is leading to civil war and leading to the societal collapse. after lockdown orders in may, armed spectators called for her to open the state and the president publicly criticized

the public safety orders and tweeted, liberal michigan. whitmer accused the president of the alleged plot. >> last week the president of the united states stood before the american people and refused to condemn white supremacists and hate groups like these two michigan militia groups. stand back and stand by, he told them. when our leaders speak, their words matter. they carry weight. when our leaders meet with, encourage, fraternize with domestic terrorists they legitimize their actions. >> and the president responded to her in a series and about governor whitmer the president wrote this. rather than say thank you, she

calls me a white supremacist. she tweeted, mr. president, i thought you weren't interested in a virtual debate. let's bring in nbc news correspondent for investigations, tom winter. and former chief of staff at the cia and department of defense now an nbc news national security analyst jeremy bash. guys, good morning. tom, i want to start with you. you have been reporting on this story since it broke yesterday. who are these guys and how close did they get to the governor? >> i'll take the second question first. as far as -- because of the investigation, as far as this investigation goes, moving forward, the good news is because of the informants that you talked about, because of the work of undercover fbi agents and informants who came forward to the fbi because they were concerned that some of these people were talking about getting the addresses for local police officers in michigan and killing them, came forward to them and agreed to actually wear what we would call wearing a wire to record the conversations so not only for the sake of the

case, for the sake of the investigation, they were able to get great evidence because the conversations of the six people that were charged federally in this conspiracy to commit kidnapping plot yesterday, they were able to record those conversations and it's tremendous evidence. obviously gets to the motive and intent of what the people wanted to do. but in one particular meeting which occurred in the basement of a vacuum shop in would have the people arrested yesterday, they came around and collected everybody's cell phones. so from a law enforcement perspective, these are difficult situations when you put an informant in a situation like that. but because they had the informants in there, because they had the undercover agents they did not -- they would not have been in a position to really harm the governor. as far as our reporting and where this goes moving forward, you know, i was reviewing this morning again some of the reporting we did yesterday as far as the social media profiles of the six people that were charged federally as well as the seven that were charged by the state.

when you take that article, and you look at it, and you replace the word boogaloo which is part of the group that the people belong to which is is a reference to the obscure 1980s movie, a group that wants to overturn government, a group that is against liberal causes and liberal groups, they want to kill police officers as well, when you look at it and you look at our reporting yesterday, replace the word boogaloo with isis and replace with its isis' messaging and it reads just like the stories that we used to do then. people being radicalized through social media and the internet, people taking a short amount of time between seemingly normal conversations and then turning just like that to extremist views. so i think this is something that's going to bear watching in the coming weeks and months. this is not something that's going away and poses a serious threat to law enforcement across the country. >> i want to point out here, the republican leader or the state

senator in the state of michigan this is what a swift condemnation sounds like. a threat against our governor is a threat against us all. they're not patriots there's no honor in their actions, they're criminals and traitors and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. that's the republican head of the senate in michigan. jeremy bash, when you talk about these groups like these men this is exactly what the fbi director christopher wray has been warning about for a long time now. privately and also in open senate hearings about the kind of groups. white supremacist groups that might take up arms. when the president says stand by at a debate that sends a signal, whether he understands that or not. that sends a signal to those groups. >> first, willie, i think it's important to point out that the president is undermining law and order when he supporters the groups, the white supremacist groups, these militias, and when he undermines the work of the

fbi to confront them. point two, it's violence to send a political signal or a message. terrorism is classically defined is when an organization tries to use violence to achieve a political outcome and i think that's exactly what's happening here with these organizations, these groups, these conspiracies, in michigan. their purpose really was to fracture state government, to ignite a several war, to take down a sitting governor and they believe they had support i think from many others in the country including potentially some in washington. final point, i think it's important to note, just as this is happening as joe tied this all together with respect to the president saying he wanted to jail his opponent, did not commit to the peaceful transfer of power, you have republican senators like mike lee of utah who is tweeting that democracy is not the objective of the

united states. i urge people to go back and look at what he put out yesterday about that. that is code. that is code for authoritarianism for autocracy. maybe he meant some academic point he didn't convey well, but i think if we don't make clear that democracy is our objective you'll see a lot more of these kind of activities and this is dangerous. this is domestic terrorism and this needs to be confronted. willie, we are at war with the organizations and we better act like it. >> well, if mike lee wants to talk about the difference between a democracy and a constitutional republic and he wants to explain in more detail that the founders were concerned about majorityian rule, he needs to do more than try to write it in 140 or 180 characters because

it didn't come across well yesterday. just one of the raw, naked majority rule was the united states senate which was supposed to be the saucer that cooled down the hot coffee. and the way that was done especially in the hottest of issues was to have a filibuster and that's what usually stopped the raw naked use of power to pass -- to pass legislation but also to push through supreme court justices. well, mitch mcconnell killed that filibuster and so now we are left with nothing more than the senate against decades of political norms, being nothing

more than a crude majoritarian chamber and unless he spoke out about the mcconnell rule as it pertained to the united states and nominating people which is now reduced nothing to mike makes right, if we have 50 votes, we are going to push it through, then mike lee shouldn't be giving us lectures on democracies versus republics, because it's the republican party who has done more over four years to undermine madisonian democracy. to sit silently by while the president of the united states talks about how article 2 gives him unlimited powers and again, i won't go on much more about mike pence, but mike pence talking about checks and balances and constitutional norms in the debate, he never said a word every time the

president said article 2 gave him unfettered power. every time the president of the united states questioned the authority of federal judges, every time the president of the united states spit on constitutional norms. he said nothing about that and also, mike lee was first in line to breach constitutional norms and again, to turn the senate from the world's most deliberative body to nothing more than a crude vote counting chamber. and so mike and the rest of the republicans in the senate really aren't the best people to lecture us on the difference between democracies and then of course our founders were concerned about from ancient greece, athens, specifically. he's not really the best person to give us those lectures on the fears that our founders had about raw naked democracy versus

a constitutional republic, because mike lee and mitch mcconnell and lindsey graham have done more to move us towards that vision where there aren't checks against the tyranny of the majority. and they have done more than anybody else, especially as it pertains to the supreme court justices so mike makes right. they've said -- they have said if the constitution allows us to do it we can do it. so yes, we're going to stop merrick garland. we're going to lie and make up this standard saying oh, well, you know, there's a standard that says we can't ever appoint somebody the same year of the election. lindsey graham says hold me to it, steve baines in montana says hold me to it, we can never do it during the election year and then they go back and change their mind and lie to the american people and lindsey graham lies to the people of south carolina and mitch mcconnell lies to america.

because mike makes right. and what do they say the constitution allows us to do? they're setting up now again the democrats to be able to say, constitution allows us to do it. let's finish the job of fdr. let's go ahead and add the three more justices that fdr wanted to add pack in the 1930s. can they say, oh, they breached constitutional norms, no, they're not breaching the constitutional norms. they're only doing what mitch mcconnell has been doing over the last four years. mike makes right, if the constitution says we can do it we can do it so mike, the next time you want to talk about democracies, don't do it on twitter and you need to justify your actions in gutting political forms that have turned again the united states senate

into the straight senate. so dave, sorry for that side note, but i think it's really important for americans who are following that debate to understand what's going on and what's going on in the senate over the past four years. but dave aronberg, i want to ask you about white supremacy and the dangers of white supremacy over the last 3 1/2 years since charlottesville, yeah, the last 3 1/2 years since charlottesville and what you have to worry about in your position as a prosecutor and what you hear from state authorities and national authorities about what a great danger white supremacy holds in the age of trump. >> joe, white supremacist violence is the number one terrorist threat facing our country by far. and you don't have to take my word for it. that was the conclusion of the

department of homeland security threat assessment who said last year was the most lethal year for domestic extremism since 1985, the year of the oklahoma city bombing. this is white power violence and we must call it out as such. you need to explicitly condemn it, words matter. you don't tell it to stand by. you don't tell it to liberate states. the actions and words of our leaders do have an effect here. and that's why i was disturbed as a state attorney that the dhs' threat assessment was delayed by many months and the thinking it was delayed because what was coming out in it was politically damaging to the president. and in fact a high level whistle-blower said they were pressured to downplay white supremacist violence and give more attention to antifa and other left-wing groups that are not as much of a threat. politics should never get in the way of public safety so i was

disturbed by that. also another thing to pay attention to is that the state of michigan has a domestic terrorism statute on the books like florida, but the federal government does not. when it cops to domestic terrorism they don't have as many powers as they could if they have a broader statute on the books. i think that's something that congress should consider because it's greater threat than international terrorism. and finally, the michigan attorney general has said that this plot was just the tip of the iceberg. and i agree. i think we all have to be concerned from the state, to the federal government, that november 3rd could be an inflection point, you can see more attempts at violence. they'll take their cues from the president. it's imperative that the president and the vice president, everyone, call for the peaceful transition of power because lives are at stake. >> and they have not done that and they have not done that in a very public way, just most recently at the debate from vice president pence.

thank you so much. i want to pick up on that point with you, tom winter. dave was just saying that was the tip of the iceberg and we heard that from the fbi and you can look at this and say they're bumbling idiots but there are others who aren't. how big is this problem? >> based on other intelligence reports put out by regional law enforcement across the country and in discussions with the fbi this is a considerable concern. willie, we have an unprecedented situation headed into the election. we have at least in modern times in last several decades we haven't had a political discourse and a political divide in this country that's been as strong. on top of that we have the internet which is an amplifier and a speaker the likes of which we have never seen. so it allows the fringe groups and extremists to pipe their radical views into homes of

people, homes of people, by the way, that are at home. they're not at work. because of this pandemic, they're either out of work, w k working from home, they're short on cash and they're looking for something to comfort them or direct their anger in the moment. so this is coming together as a one intelligence report that i read recently said in an unprecedented way, as we approach this election. so i would say that the threat here is very real. it's not as organized as say an al qaeda right before 9/11, but when you look at the amount of people that have weapons, have access to things as you alluded to, willie, they have the equipment whether they're weapons or explosives to do a lot of damage so i think this is something we'll see a lot more of. >> tom winter and jeremy bash, thank you for both for coming on the show on this very important

morning. still ahead on "morning joe," donald trump and the 25th amendment. house speaker nancy pelosi wants congress to have a say in whether the president is in his right mind to serve. plus, new numbers on the state of the presidential race with election day just 25 days away. "morning joe" is coming right back. ing right back ♪ ♪ ♪ smooth driving pays off with allstate, the safer you drive the more you save you never been in better hands allstate click or call for a quote today you never been in better hands allstate ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

i haven't been to the white house since august the 6th because my impression was their approach to how to handle this was different from mine and what i insisted question do in the senate which is to wear a mask and practice social distancing. >> i'm going to try to -- try a

rally on saturday night. might come back and do one in pennsylvania the following night. it's incredible what's going on. i feel so good. >> have you had a test since your diagnosis a week ago? >> well, what we're doing is probably the test will be tomorrow, the actual test because there's no reason to test all the time. >> welcome back to "morning joe." >> the president again, pushed by sean hannity several times to tell the american people that he had tested negative and he couldn't do it, because, mika, he's obviously not taking tests. >> not being honest about. >> we are not being told when he got this, we're not being told when he had the last negative test. we're not being told if he's had a negative test since he's been bunkered down in the white house. >> in a white house that wants to protect and control the facts, the problem is they will not share when he first tested positive. so if he's truly well right now, that would mean that he had the coronavirus a lot earlier than

they first reported. that that friday night diagnosis was bs and that perhaps he had full-on coronavirus during the debate, knowingly. which is it, mr. president, and the white house? did he test positive after the debate or before? we're still waiting for that answer. that would be nice to know how many people were exposed. >> willie, as you know, it's not an either/or. it's not mutually exclusive. he could have had covid on the night of the debate, he could still have covid. we have stories of herman cain of course who died -- >> he went to tulsa. >> died 30 days after he first received it. our family has a friend who was 54, 53, who got covid.

had it for three or four days, got better and then died two days later and shocked everybody. so this is an unpredictable disease and this president needs real doctors around him, not dr. nix from the simpsons, you know, hello, everybody, things are great. >> i know everyone wants the information, i won't give it to you. >> yes, we need that information, willie, but more importantly, the president's family needs to get him doctors that are going to take care of him so he doesn't get worse. so he can recover. even if it is -- if he ever does take a test today that shows that he's negative, he still needs a few days of bed rest

because covid as we have said before based on neighbors and a friends that we have had after you have had covid, you are not yourself for quite some time. >> we just heard from dr. gupta who says the window is 20 days for a man like president trump at his age and he is talking about going out to hold a rally tomorrow and he's doing with it the enthusiasm of his own doctor who said, yes, i cleared him to go out tomorrow. it's incredibly reckless and what happens to the people around president trump? these are real doctors. dr. conley is a navy doctor, he was at war in afghanistan and in iraq. dr. ronny jackson was well respected in the obama white house. a lot of the people that we know and worked with him really liked him and trusted him and president obama really liked him and when they get close to president trump, whether it's

proximity or whatever, their ethics go out the door. as mika said we don't know if it was really when he was diagnosed suggesting he can go out and hold a rally tomorrow with crowds nine days after testing positive for the coronavirus. >> jonathan lemire has been covering this story more closely -- or as closely as anybody in the white house press corps. jonathan, get us up to date on the very latest with the conflicting signals coming out of the white house. the conflicting signals coming from the president's doctors and donald trump's refusal to answer several times sean hannity's question has he tested negative yet for covid. >> let's go with more closely. i'll take more closely. joe, there's a lot of unanswered questions here and mika hit on one of them a moment ago.

the white house has said that his first positive test -- they have said this, the first positive test was upon his return from the bedminster fund-raiser on the thursday but what they have steadfastly refused to say when was last negative test before that and that's because he wasn't tested earlier today. this is what we're reporting on. we know that chris wallace said that the president was not tested on the debate site. they said it was the honor system. the longer this goes with the president saying with his team refusing to say when he last tested negative there's a growing belief it had been a day or two or more since his last test, which means he was perhaps indeed positive for several days including on the debate day. so as we look backwards, that's an unanswered question. as we look forward there are several others. dr. conley released a memo suggesting that the president was symptom free. you know, that he was through a

lot of his course of his treatment. and that could resume sort of normal activities as of saturday, but yesterday morning as part of the president's fox business interview he did note he was still taking that steroid which of course is a medication that would say perhaps bring down a fever and also as we know can sometimes give patients sort of an artificial power and invigoration that would pass when the steroid course does run out. we don't know exactly what other treatment he has received in recent days. we don't know, despite sean hannity pressing him last night if he has taken any more tests, has he been shown to be negative yesterday, can the doctors ascertain if he's contagious and if he's traveling this weekend or early next week potentially exposing quite a few people and put them at risk. he has been venturing into the

west wing over the objection of aides who have to wear full ppe around him. if he does travel, he'll be on air force one and that recirculated air exposing the press corps and his aides. and at the rally site in florida or wherever it may be. so there's a question as to how safe it is. not just for him, but for everyone around him. as we heard on the interview last night he still did seem he had to mute himself a few times. he was stifling a cough it seems. does he have the ability and the strength right now to conduct himself for an hour or plus rally. there's a lot we don't know and as a final point, again, as i mentioned last hour, we have not laid eyes on him since monday. he's done the interviews, tweeted a lot but we haven't seen him and we don't have a complete picture as to how he's doing. >> gene robinson, in "the washington post" in morning, you warn readers that it's only

going to get worse. the president's unmoored behavior is only going to get worse. >> yeah. i don't just fear it. i mean, you can see it. and, you know, at the moment you don't know if this is, in fact, being boosted by the steroid dexamethasone that gives people the energy and this euphoria and frankly makes them a little crazy a lot of the time, or -- but that would just be an added effect to what we have already been seeing. it's ramping up. he looks at the polls, he sees that he's not just losing, he's losing badly. and it looks as if the floor has fallen out from under him. i mean, the numbers we were -- we have seen over the past week have been landslide numbers for joe biden and, you know, maybe

they will regress to the mean at some point and the race will go back to where it was but where it was is, you know, a seven or eight point lead for biden and a really bad defeat for trump and he's frantic about this. and so you have the absolutely unacceptable, un-american spectacle of the president, you know, calling yesterday morning for his predecessor and his opponent and his previous opponent to be arrested by his -- and lambasting his attorney general for not getting that done. lambasting his secretary of state for not properly persecuting hillary clinton, and you know, expressing the disappointment in the head of the fbi that he installed, for

not getting this job done. right? the boss wants it done, they didn't get it done. this is not the america that we thought, at least, we were living in and that we -- and that we thought was our country and this just has to end. but it's going to get worse. it's going to get more frantic and it will be a test of all of these these next four weeks. >> mika, right on queue, we have not seen the president several days. fox news just announced he will be interviewed tonight on camera in person by dr. mark segal who is their medical analyst. so we will see the president on camera tonight on fox news. >> fantastic. that will be very interesting. i just want to point out though one other moving part to what we're discussing and maybe jonathan lemire can confirm, but didn't mike pence change all of his plans and come back to

washington and do we know why and i would like to say just pure analysis that he did not look good at the debate. and almost inquiring about his health, but what is that part of the equation here? >> sure. the vice president after the debate in salt lake city then went on to the southwest, to nevada and arizona, for a pair of campaign events yesterday and the schedule was that he was going to be in indiana today. his home state, to cast his vote in person early voting. and then back to washington before more campaign travel but they changed the schedule last night. he was set to return to washington and he did, but they scrapped the indiana trip. he'll remain in d.c. today which definitely raised eyebrows. as you said there was some speculation how he looked the other night on the debate stage. certainly there's always speculation about how the president is doing because the updates have been sporadic and not very clear and we haven't seen him for a few days until

tonight. i will say the vice president's office is simply saying that pence was simply tired. he wanted a day of rest, that he'll be back out on saturday and they say he and his wife have been tested every day and it's been negative. they say it's a down day and in the culture of secrecy and the lack of transparency around the white house it's raised a lot of questions. >> all right. >> so let's bring in msnbc strategist mike barnicle. from fordham university and at the free owe.com, christina greer and donny deutsch as well. >> so mike barnicle put in perspective what we have seen in the last day or two. >> the interesting thing about

today's discussion for the last 15 minutes or so, we can undermine what jonathan lemire said, we don't know. the amount of information we don't know about this man is frightening. separate the personality, separate his behavior and everything we have learned and and heard from him over the past four or five years, all of us here on the set, for many more years than four or five, donald trump is the president of the united states. his erratic behavior, their refusal -- the administration's refusal and his personal refusal to tell us exactly where he stands medically and then in reference to dr. gupta's interview earlier today on the program that the period of containment is 20 days, not nine or ten, 20 days. and we have the president of the united states performing as erratically as he did yesterday, as he does every day since he was diagnosed with covid-19, this is a national security

issue. this is an issue that should frighten everyone and i'm sure it has a lot of people at the pentagon on alert as it ought to be. that's where we are in the united states of america, even setting the election aside, that's who we are. we have an unstable, erratic president of the united states. frightening. >> mike, you have been a reporter and a columnist for your adult life. i want to ask, go back to watergate, go back to the excesses we saw under nixon, lbj, just go down the list of all of the excesses you have seen since you have been a reporter. i hope this is not a leading question and i hope your answer to this is yes, but have you ever seen any president do

anything as un-american, as -- that did as much violence to american democracy, a madisonian democracy, as donald trump, president of the united states, calling for the arrest of his political opponent, less than a month before the election and ordering in effect his attorney general to arrest his political opponent or trump saying he would have to do it himself after his re-election. >> that's a good word, violence, because that's exactly what he's done not only this week, not only yesterday, but for a long period of time prior to his becoming president, but more dangerous to us as a republic during his presidency. i call it donald trump using the language of permission. the language of permission to believe that the virus is a hoax. the language of permission to believe that white urban

terrorists who tried to kidnap governor whitmer in michigan is a normal thing. the language of permission that allows too many americans to think that they don't have to wear a mask. that they -- that a vaccine is on the eve of being released to us. the language of permission that has so far damaged so much of the country that we all know and love and that we remember and when i say remember, the country that we all know and love existed a very short period of time ago. we do have troubles as a nation, but this man, this one man, donald trump has used the language of permission in a violent way to disturb the norms that this country has always been used to. >> susan del percio, aside from the fact that the president on mike's point called kamala harris a monster which will just -- set aside right there because we're dealing with a

president who on the same day did not condemn the plot to kill michigan governor gretchen whitmer and also perhaps incited the potential attack by tweeting liberate michigan and dog whistles and refused to condemn white supremacy in stand back and stand by and even on this day that this plot was announced and unfolding before us, she talked to the michiganders and the president is criticizing her. this man is crazy. he's not well. he's cruel. and everything that he appears to be saying and doing is leading to a place where why wouldn't anyone and everyone who could be considering the 25th

amendment right now? >> well, he's -- [ indiscernible ]. only someone who is that, frankly, evil would continue to go after governor whitmer. he didn't just learn this yesterday. this investigation has been going on for months, he's been aware of it. his actions over the last several months i think has contributed to this environment where -- like mike barnicle said it's permission -- it's okay to go after. now we look at the 25th amendment there's something very real about that and i do hope speaker pelosi did mention it, she continues putting herself in isolation as well should senator grassley as they're the second and the third after -- and that donald trump is a very dangerous person right now. it's -- i think he has to be very afraid of something, but

it's up to him to risk his health. he should not increase the number on the lower right-hand corner by affecting other people. >> so, donny deutsch, i know in messaging, that the president had a mealy mouthed tweet condemning violence. i mean, if republicans hide behind that, i have never known who they were since this president started. but aren't they at this point through messaging contributing to the damage and the violence that this president is inciting? >> i think you're going to see republicans acting differently over the next 25 days and you saw an early tip of it, i think beyond trump's insane rant yesterday, the huge news was mitch mcconnell really for the first time ever basically saying, you know, hey, look, he does things different in the white house with corona. basically condemning, you know,

donald trump and the white house behavior. their entire approach towards corona where he said i haven't been there since august and i won't go there. that's the first crack and you'll start to see the lemmings go off the cliff and move away from the president as it really looks like he'll go down to the historic defeat. i mentioned we have never seen donald trump play from behind and yesterday we saw him come out and saying you should arrest his current opponent, go back and arrest the previous opponent. and it's going to continue and i said this, i want to state it again. use your imagination, as a reality show producer him hiring people, fake people to say that joe biden did this in the past, to take to the streets now, not to wait until the election. he's an unhinged reality show producer. so this is just the beginning. the next 25 days you can't

imagine what he's capable of, but the one thing i want to say to people to make people feel better, he looks weak. the one thing that donald trump always had is perceived strength and we all know that, you know, it's faux strength, but the chest stuck out, the dominance, everything he is about, there's a patheticness to it. there's almost an unscariness to it. he looks sad. he looks weak. he looks confused. he looks toothless, he looks defanged. i think that that combined with republicans starting to feel he'll make his behavior less scary and more pathetic. >> so, willie, just wanted to -- >> none of this is good for america. >> i wanted -- no. i'm very concerned for america. >> not just about him. >> my gosh, i hope his family and republicanss gather around him the president and pressure him to do what's best for his health, first of all. but also, donny was talking

about the polls, there may be a natural tightening. there's going to be a natural tightening and we have seen polls showing donald trump losing by double digits in florida and losing by double digits in michigan. losing by double digits in other states. that's not going to happen. those races -- florida is still a very close race. you talk to people in both sides they'll tell you it's within a couple of points. look at the midwestern states, both sides will tell you it's five, you know, whether it's wisconsin or michigan, it's four or five, six points, that they're very tight races and of course here's an emerson poll showing biden up by ten points in michigan. i think the events yesterday you might as well take michigan off of the map. that is one state that donald trump will not win after what happened yesterday. but, states like michigan, we have seen a lot of seven, eight,

nine, ten -- no, it's five points, four points. arizona is within a couple of points. north carolina within a couple of points, georgia tieed. ohio close. pennsylvania, four or five points. now it's stubborn. it's a stubborn four or five points like people and jonathan lemire will tell you this and i have heard it from trump people, i have heard it from democrats as well who have been polling every day of this entire campaign they will say it's not a ten-point lead. it's still a stubborn four or five points but it's a stubborn lead that biden has been holding on to for quite some time. and he's starting to inch over 50% which of course will make it even harder for donald trump to get there. >> yeah. there's no question and you talked to people inside the biden campaign. they don't believe any of the public polls in places like pennsylvania and florida where

they're seeing double digit leads in some polls. there's no way the lead is that big but they are leading. it's amazing if you look at just -- just look at a graph over the last six months or five months, whatever it is, and just look at how stable the race has been. biden has ticked up in the last month certainly but he's had that spread for a long time. so it is a stubborn lead for sure. there was a new pew poll out just this morning that shows the ten-point national spread. there are a couple interesting stats in here that i wanted to point to that speak to how the country is feeling about the candidates. biden is plus 33 on who is more compassionate. he's plus 26 on who's a better role model. he's plus 18 on who is more honest. so there is some character. there is a gut feeling among voters at play that joe biden frankly is just a better guy and that they're exhausted by the chaos. if you look down-ballots as well, professor grier, as you teach political science, in a

state like michigan where we just showed that emerson poll a ten-point spread it's hurting a candidate like republican john james a very impressive guy, who republicans had put a lot of hope into in his race against gary peters. that same emerson poll shows him down ten points as well. so there's obviously a drag that starts at the top in some of these states with president trump. but when you take the national polling in with the swing state polling, what's the picture that you see? >> well, willie, i think the coattails as i explained to my students in intro to politics aren't just there for this president. we know a strong top of ticket can help everyone down-ballot. we know that all 435 members of house up for re-election, one-third of the senate and in several states you have governors, you've got district attorneys. they have some mayors, and members of the state house. so when you have a weak top of the ticket in the party which donald trump quite honestly is right now, it's going to hurt

those folks in arizona who are running for the senate. or people in south carolina. we're seeing lindsey graham in the fight for his life he's never had before. so as our previous guest said we're starting to see some cracks in the foundation. when mitch mcconnell says i haven't been to the white house, we essentially have a different philosophy on what safety and leadership looks like, we have never heard that from mitch mcconnell because even though his race isn't as tight, he still has to two back to kentucky and worry about his re-election efforts. so donald trump has weakened his party in so many ways because it's the first time in a long time we have seen the president not bother to expand his base over the course of four years. this has been quite baffling to pollsters, to political pundits, to political scientists where every president wants to "a," get re-elected but you want to expand your base across the country because you know come re-election time you want to strengthen up that electoral

college map. the president -- we know he doesn't understand the role of the executive. i'm not sure he understands the role of the electoral college. but we have seen him rely on other ways to try and secure his position. that would be voter suppression, voter disenfranchisement and disinformation an partnering with our adversaries to possibly make sure that the worst of the information gets out there to say nothing of armed militias he can't disavow himself of, whether it's in the debate setting or on twitter. >> associate professor at fordham university, christina greer, thank you. and susan del percio, thank you as always. still ahead on "morning joe" the next guest leads the health system that was at the epicenter of the covid and treated more patients than any other

provider. we'll discussion the recent rise in cases and hospitalizations. you're watching "morning joe." i. you're watching "morning joe." how will we do it, at a time like this? we've been asked that before. and through pandemics, and depressions, wars that split a nation, and fractured the world. americans have always found a way to vote and make their voices heard. so stand with the national council on election integrity and help make sure every vote is counted. no matter who you vote for, or how. because while this election may feel different, we all call america home.

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we want to continue to show the humanity of the numbers that you see on the screen every day, the numbers of people who have lost their lives to coronavirus. "the new york times" has compiled many of those stories in a series entitled those we have lost. among them, mario cesar romero. an art historian and curator. he was educated in catholic schools growing up and graduating from fordham university with a degree in art history. he spent his life cultivating culture in east harlem where he was the borough official historian. he could be seen giving walking tours and promoting local

artists. mario died from complications of coronavirus at the age of 78. lanneka barksdale was a gifted ball room dancer and she work as a bartender and driving for lyft. but by night she was a staple on the dance floor and dancing the night away. she suffered from severe asthma and unfortunately succumbed to the coronavirus in march at the age of 47. willie? >> too many of these stories, mika. meanwhile, new york state is putting in restrictions in growing hot spots. governor cuomo implemented the tiered closures and it closes down the schools and the restaurants and a limit on large gatherings. joining news is president and ceo of the northwell health, michael dowling title of

"leading through a pandemic t inside story of humanity, innovation and lessons learned during the covid-19 crisis." i want to first ask you about what's happening in new york. we have long been told that even though it had been suppressed over the summer, it would come back in new york city and across the state of new york in the fall and the winter. i had a call with my kid's school where they underlined that fact, we have to remain vigilant because the expectation is that coronavirus will be back in our lives. how do you see the horizon of when it comes back and how strongly it coupmes back? >> well, complacency is dangerous and they get calm and everything looks good, that it really is good. i think what's been happening recently is an example that this will come back, maybe not as bad as it was before, but we're fighting a virus that comes in waves. we see this example in europe.

we see this example in india right now. and it is no surprise those of us involved in it on the day to day basis fully expected to see another wave coming back. what's important here is that the responsibility to deal with this is everybody's responsibility. and everybody in the community, so selfishness and people in some communities who decide not to comply with safety measures, not to wear masks, not to social distance, would think, well, it doesn't matter what i do. but it does matter what you do. and what we are seeing now in new york is a number of communities where the behavior has not been appropriate and obviously the governor has to take the appropriate actions when these things occur. so i do expect that we will see a situation like this for many, many months and what we have to do is being diligent and ensure that we talk about the

prevention. right now we are not seeing that many hospitalizations. there has been a small uptick in our health system yesterday. yesterday we had 110 patients. that's very different from what we had back in march and april where we had 3,500 patients in our hospitals. this is nothing to take lightly. covid is not something that you just don't have to worry about. it is around and it depends upon what the public does on an ongoing basis each and every day. >> doctor, just not going to have you comment on the president but the contention he put out in the videos was don't like it dominate you, you can beat it. what are the death rates, are they going up or down? is he right? it is going away on that front? are the therapeutics better so that the covid experience is less painful and lonely or

what's the reality, sir? >> well, the reality is we know more about the disease today than we did back in march and april. we have a lot more treatments because of the -- you know, some of the trials that have been going on as well as the experience you get as you deal with this. but if you get covid in a serious way, it does dominate you. so when we have leadership talking about it really doesn't matter or you didn't necessarily have to take precautions, this is very, very dangerous. in fact it's not leadership at all. i would be addressing back a number of months ago if we had leadership that said, you know, we're at war against the major virus and i'm going to show you through my example and educate you that all of us in a unified way across the whole united states should be taking every safety measure that we possibly can.

so you have the unity of purpose, the unity of mission. if we had done that nationally, five, six months ago, we would be in a much better position today. but it is very, very difficult to tell people in one part of the community whether it's new york or california, whatever, to say you should be doing all these things because for example masks work. and then you have national leadership saying, well, masks may not work, who cares, i'm not going to wear it. i'm going to have meetings all over the place where people don't have to wear masks. so you don't have any unity of purpose, any unity of focus. leadership is about telling the truth, dealing with reality. it's about bringing people together. we didn't bring people together here nationally and this is one of the reasons that we have the difficulties that we're in right now. we could have been in a much better different situation if you had national leadership that dealt with the reality of the

situation and not their own presumed reality. so i'm hoping that everybody takes it very, very seriously. we went through the experience here a number of months ago they don't think we ever want to go through again. and i hope we don't. >> we are talking with the president and ceo of northwell health and the co-author of "leading during a pandemic." mike barnicle has the next question. >> doctor, we all know about what covid-19 can do to people when stricken by it. but we don't know a lot about the disease it seems. we know, for instance, as you just alluded to there are more treatments for the disease right now, but can you speak to the after effects of the disease. when you get the disease, you quarantine, you're treated medically, 10, 20 days or

whatever. but the outlying aspects a month or two months later, the after effects of the disease. >> first of all, i'm not a physician but i'm involved in it very closely. that's a very good question. we have seen some of my own employees who had the virus back in march, were treated, were hospitalized. and they go home and now some of them are back to work, but there are lingering issues that they're still suffering from. we are studying this right now. we see a lot of it with regard to our home care programs. so there are long-term results that are negative from this virus. i think it will take us a bit of time to figure out what this all means, but it doesn't mean when you get it, you become hospitalized and then are discharged from the hospital

that you are cured. i don't think we can fully see that. we have a lingering issue that will go on for potentially many, many years. only time will tell and research will tell. what the real actual impacts are. mental health impacts, health impacts, et cetera, that will be lingering for a long time. so very, very good point that we need a lot more research on all the time. >> all right. president and ceo of new york's northwell health, michael dowling, thank you so much. up next, one of the candidates running for president will be our guest. we'll be right back. - [narrator] the shark vacmop combines powerful suction

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for his take on the election, welcome big kristol. >> thank you. really good to be with you. what are you doing here? >> what are you doing here? >> they introduce med they said billy kristol. >> i think they said bill

kristol. >> listen, i don't want to fight with you. i'm here tonight to talk about why i'm voting for joe biden. >> that's why i'm here. >> there's fantastic. we never agree on anything. >> one thing we can agree on, we need to have a president with a plan for covid. >> somebody who will protect medicare and social security. vote biden. >> well, i'll tell you, as bill murray would say, willie geist, dogs and cats living together. that's -- >> kind of funny. >> quite a combination there, willie. >> yeah. i never thought i'd see the two of them together. i think with due respect to bill kristol, billy crystal and everyone else in that name category. donny what did you make of theed a ad? >> the reference to dogs and cats was from a movie called ghostbusters, a movie with billy crystal.

for the young people. i wanted to say something that might get a little pushback. everybody is well intentioned. i could use less celebrities over the next 25 days. there's a double-edged sword for the celebrities coming out for joe biden. let's let trump take the stage. sometimes the celebrity stuff does not work in the way you think it does. just a little cautionary tale. i know that's going to get a lot of negative feedback but just from the cheap seats. >> you're saying that manny pitinkin and his wife's extraordinary video -- >> that was great. >> you don't think that will play well in northwest florida because i do. >> okay, i'm just saying that i want trump to take center stage. let him be the celebrity for the next few weeks.

>> well, that's interesting. well, president trump yesterday said he wasn't going to participate in the virtual debate with joe biden next week, but another presidential candidate says he'll fill in. with us now, let's talk about -- talk to and talk about the presidential candidate for the green party, howie hawkins. so howie, you're willing to step forward and step in for donald trump in the next week's debate in miami. >> yeah. i'm ready to debate both of them but i'm not sure they're ready to debate me. i have some real issues. >> what are they? what issues do you have to bring to the table? >> well, the green new deal. joe biden made it clear he's not for it. i was the first candidate to campaign for it here in the united states in 2010. it's been a signature of the green party through the last decade. democrats took the slogan, but then they diluted the content and now they buried it. we have a climate crisis that's continuing. and then we've got the declining life expectancy among working

class people in this country because after 45 years of stagnant wages, health care and housing costs goes through the roof we have an economic bill of rights which includes the job guarantee, a guaranteed income above poverty and medicare medi third life or death issue not being discussed at all is the new nuclear arms race, the doomsd doomsday clock is the cloesest they've ever had to midnight. get back on track on nuclear disarmament, those weapons should never be used. those are life or death issues, and i think, you know, we're on the ballot on 30 states, that's 381 electoral votes, you count the write ins, we're 514 out of a possible 513 electoral votes, i think the american people should have had the opportunity to hear what we bring to the table. so yeah, i'm willing to step in. >> yeah. mr. hawkins, it's willie geist, good to have you on this

morning. i know a long list of people who probably agree with you on every issue you just laid out right there. they think that joe biden is a neo liberal, they want to pull back on military engagement, would agree with you across the board. this year they say the election is too important. i can't waste my vote on a green party candidate. they'll bring up jill stein's name. she got more votes in michigan and wisconsin than chs the difference in the election in those states. could have swung the entire election. what do you say to those people who say not this year mr. hawkins, we need every vote we can get on the democratic side? >> we're a second front against front. we're a stronger anti-trump vote, and in a state like new york, biden has been consistently 25 points ahead of trump and since late august over 30 points. so the question for progressives who agree with these policies is how are you going to vote against trump? you vote for biden and you're for a green new deal and

medicare for all, you're actually voting against those things. you vote for the green ticket, you tell him whoever gets elected that's what you want. you're not getting lost in the sauce, you're actually giving voice to your policies. and also, in new york state and this is true for us around the country in 40 of the 50 states, whether the green party has a ballot line for the next election cycle depends on our presidential vote. in new york the democrats got a bill passed attached to the state budget that triples the number of votes we need to maintain our ballot. it's now 2% of the total vote. that's another reason to give us a vote in new york so we can run candidates up and down the ballot going forward. >> all right. green party presidential candidate, howie hawkins. thank you very much for being on the show with us this morning. really appreciate it. >> skpand you know, willie, ver good question you asked about the green party. were it not for ralph nader in

2000 and jill stein in 2016, it is quite likely that a republican would have never held the white house in the 21st century. i mean, that really -- those two green party candidates were the difference, and just think about that. democrats would have held the white house for the past 16 years were it not for candidates taking away from al gore in 2000 and you have to assume that gore would have likely gotten reelected in '04 and taken away from hillary clinton from 2016. >> yeah, and that's a message we've by the way heard from bernie sanders himself who's liberal credentials are in no question whatsoever. he said to his supporters, i know we don't agree with joe biden on everything. i know he doesn't go as far as we would go on some of these issues, but this election is too important. you've got to go out and support the candidate.

an important message from bernie sanders, but to mr. hawkins, i'm ci citing people who would agree with him on everything he said. >> he votes cutting the military by 75%, that would be a dream for vladimir putin, president xi and some of the other people. >> right. really quickly, mike, need to ask you about mlb playoffs, first of all, they've been getting good numbers, really good numbers in this new playoff format. we look like we're now confronting basically the equivalent, the moral equivalent of josef stalin versus chairman mao with the yankees and the astros seemingly headed towards an alcs championship game unless tampa, those lovable kids from the most beautiful baseball field in america can win

tonight. >> the trop. >> yeah, tampa, joe, is actually the tampa bay rays are the only team that are truly comfortable because they think everything that they're playing is a home game because they play without fans every day of the year during a normal season. [ laughter ] a and that's the truth. listen, i differ with lamiere on this. i sat through so many terrible, terrible yankee defeats of the red sox, horrendous defeats. on this one, the yankees versus the astros, if it came to that, yankees would be my choice to win. >> that's a big statement, america's team, tonight joe, we have on the mound gerrit cole, this this kid we found playing in a sand lot in the bronx. he was throwing a ball, and we

said who's this kid. we pulled him to the side, talked to him and gave him $324 million and he'll be pitching tonight with the series on the line. >> joe, can i jump in -- >> hold on a second, i just have to finish this gerrit cole story. it really was crazy. the first thing that happened is he wasn't even throwing a baseball, right? some yankee owner who was in a part of town where he shouldn't have been at a time of night that he shouldn't have been there, saw gerrit cole chucking rocks at passing police cruiser cruisers. at such a remarkable speed that he went over and said, hey, kid. >> okay. >> i can't continue. donnie, you take it from here. >> we don't advocate that. it's how it happened. >> a message to lamere, the other night trump called --

>> okay, bye bye you all. >> very, very good. >> just excuse me, excuse me, i'm speaking. still ahead, it's been quite a week for president trump. >> actually did -- >> you really are going to interrupt me? >> gerrit cole would throw the rock at the police cruisers. so quickly, and of course those are the type of people the yankees sign. >> yeah. >> red sox would never do that. >> this is what lost the debate for president trump and mike pence. >> we were the first team, you check it, we were the first team to integrate. i can't even say that. go ahead. >> you're in big trouble. it is been quite a week for president trump. he called his coronavirus diagnosis a blessing from god, and claimed he's been cured. he appeared to blame gold star families for his infection, which is really weird. >> yeah, that's right. >> he called joe biden, he called for his indictment and much more. we're running through it all.

>> donny deutsch called the astros comment -- >> next on "morning joe." >> we'll be right back. to actively repair and strengthen enamel. so you don't just brush to clean, you brush to build. pronamel intensive enamel repair. look at that embarrassing you. that wall is your everest. but not any more. today let's paint.

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the president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now, so i don't know how to answer for his behavior. >> so it's been a very interesting journey. i learned a lot about covid. now i'm better and maybe i'm immune. i don't know. but don't let it dominate your lives. i feel great. i feel like perfect, so i think this was a blessing from god that i caught it. this was a blessing in disguise. >> these people should be indicted. this was the greatest political crime in the history of our country, and that includes obama and it includes biden. >> well, i'd like to come back to the white house soon to do another interview, mr. president. i'd love to come back to the white house. >> why isn't hillary clinton being indicted for terminating 30,000 emails she got from

congress? i figured there would be a chance i would catch it. sometimes i'd be in groups of, for instance, gold star families. i met with gold star families. i didn't want to cancel that. they come within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me and they do. and frankly i'm not telling them to back up. i'm not doing it. i don't think i'm contagious at all, and this monster that was on stage with mike pence who destroyed her last night, by the way, but this monster, she says, no, no, there won't be fracking. there won't be this. everything she said is a lie. i don't believe the polls because we've never had this much support. they have a boat thing, they have 5,000 boats, thousands of trucks all over the country. >> i took over a depleted military, old equipment, broken equipment, even in the army all brand new uniforms with the belt, everybody wanted the belt. we're taking care of our

seniors. you're not vulnerabilitile. >> they want to take care of certain little tiny fish that aren't doing very well without water, to be honest with you. >> the president is, shall we say, in an altered state right now, so i don't know how to answer for his behavior. >> what a week it's been. it was exactly one week ago that president trump went public with his covid diagnosis. now he says he's ready to return to the campaign trail maybe as soon as tomorrow? >> so willie, you know, mika and i, we have rules before we come on this show. i'm not allowed to talk about baseball for long periods of time. >> no. >> nor am i allowed to talk about our lost decade in turkey, you and me. >> that's my rule, too. >> what a decade that was, by the way. >> okay.

but for her i have not allowed her to utter the phrase 25th amendment, you know, because every morning she has wanted to utter -- >> been right all along. >> 25th amendment, and i say, honey, you can't say that every day, and she says, honey, i can if i feel like it. >> yeah. >> well, willie, here we have the president saying he's immune. we have the president of the united states pressuring his attorney general, republicans please listen, pressuring his attorney general to indict his political opponent who's beating him in the polls, to indict his last democratic opponent to indict the last democratic president saying he'll be a sad man if he doesn't do it, and trump said he'll have to basically do it himself if he gets reelected. blames gold star families for giving him covid, says i'm not

contagious despite the fact he wouldn't tell sean hannity repeatedly last night when his last test was, whether he's been test tested, whether he's negative. he calls kamala harris the vice presidential nominee for the democratic party a monster repeatedly, calls her a communist, talks about when he became president he had to give the army new uniforms with belts. everybody likes the belts. he returned to the white house when doctors didn't want him to return to the white house. he went to the west wing when people inside the white house were begging him to not go to the west wing. now he's talking about going out on the campaign trail when no doctor that was worth a damn would allow him to go out on the campaign trail. somebody, i guess this is a very

sad indictment or just a sad statement on his life. he doesn't have anybody close enough to him that loves him enough, that he trusts enough that can keep him from continuing to destroy himself and politically destroying his campaign, and politically destroying republicans across the country. tell him he just needs to sit down, and yes, he is on steroids. he's still on steroids that are -- that would make our loved ones take extra care. >> but they'd have to take time off. >> -- in what we do because of the impact it would have, especially if we were just coming off of covid or if we still had covid. there is nothing normal about this. he's not -- it does not sound like he is equipped right now to be president of the united states and may not be until his steroid treatment runs its

course. george w. bush turned over the presidency during procedures to dynam academic cheney twic-- dick che. i think safe for a lot of americans, fair for a lot of americans to say shouldn't this guy just take a rest for a week and let mike pence assume the presidency until he gets better? >> as long as mike pence is okay. >> if mike pence is okay. we don't know that right now either. >> yeah, you cannot listen to or watch those two interviews bookended first in the morning with maria bartiromo and then at night with sean hannity and think the president is okay. that's not a political statement. that's a human statement just listening to the way his brain is working right now. i would add into that comprehensive list you laid out, joe, blaming gold star families, floating the idea anyway that he might have caught it in the east room on sunday. i point out that that was the day after the supreme court event in the rose garden, which

most doctors and tracing experts have looked at as the sort of vector, as the event, the super spreader event, he's talking about an event the next day insides white house blaming gold star families possibly for giving him coronavirus. and the second is attacking michigan governor gretchen whitmer on the same day a plot was revealed to kidnap her and possibly murder her. he's attacking that governor on that day because she was critical of the president in her remarks. taken in total, joe, yesterday, and then you add in those taped videos, which hofbl honenestly e the white house media team, don't you say mr. president, let's stop and try that again. we're doing this on tape. it was rambling. it made no sense. the whole day was a complete mess and, again, not as a political statement, as an american, you don't want your president looking and sounding like that.

>> and i can't eventu imagine t national security implications of this white house right now. you ask about the media team, they have covid. maybe interns were running the show, i don't know. along with joe, willie and me we have white house reporter the "associated press" jonathan la marr mere, kari hunt, pulitzer prize winning columnist, and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson, and political reporter for "axios," hans nichols is back with us. >> jonathan lemire, donald trump has been unmoored repeatedly but obviously yesterday was so disturbing. i heard from republicans who were deeply concerned that he was going to just finish things off with less than a month to go. i'm sure you were hearing much the same throughout the day, also from white house officials.

tell us the very latest not only on the president's disturbing remarks talking about, again, in america ordering his attorney general to arrest his political opponent so he doesn't lose an election and blaming gold star families for catching covid. >> well, let's start with this, joe, that no one in the press or the public has laid eyes on the president since his return from walter reed medical center monday evening. we still haven't seen him. yes, the white house has released a couple of those videos. he's done a few phone interviews, but we haven't seen him. we're still getting incomplete information on his health. the release last night that suggested he could potentially resume working activities as of saturday, return to a normal schedule, still does not include the idea of when his last negative test was before the diagnosis or whether he has tested negative since the diagnosis. is he still contagious.

it would seem that most medical experts would believe he would be. this would be an extraordinary rush to return to work. and the aides have been eyeing early next week for a tentative return to the campaign schedule, small events in pennsylvania monday, perhaps michigan tuesday. now the president sort of out of nowhere floated the idea of major rallies this weekend in florida, and saturday and potentially pennsylvania sunday, events that not only would potentially be unsafe for those traveling on air force one with him if he is still contagious, but of course there's real question whether he'd be healthy enough to do that, to be able to be up there for an hour, 90 minutes or more, and of course he'll come into contact with lots of people backstage and at these rallies as well. that's something that's raising a lot of questions as today starts. you laid it out perfectly at the beginning of the show, he is furious with his attorney general william barr. this is the first real divide between these two men. he feels like the durham investigation is going to slowly -- republicans are banking on there being indictments here, potentially of

people from the obama administration or those connected closely to joe biden. he is frustrated with secretary of state pompeo who is normally also a close ally because he hasn't done more with the hillary clinton email investigation. four years out he is frustrated with the state of the race. he knows he is trailing and he has been deprived of running the campaign he wants because the pandemic has overshadowed anything else. there was real second guessing about his decision to blow up the second debate that's suggesting if his campaign had initially just suggested a postponement, where they eventually got to, where they eventually said let's have two debates but just push them back a week therefore to allay any sort of health concerns, maybe the debate commission and the biden camp would have gone for that. by saying initially we don't want to do it, they gave the biden camp no incentive to agree. the trump camp were the ones frames as backing out, not the biden camp. and the biden camp was saying hey, we're simply sticking to

the schedule. we know as a last point, republicans terrified the bottom might be dropping out, a depression in enthusiasm among the trump base, which might not only sink him in the white house but absolutely bring the senate down with him. still ahead on "morning joe," president trump wants to head back to the campaign trail, but could he still be sick? wo we'll talk to dr. vin gupta about the time line of the president's illness. first here is bill karins with a check on the huck headed to the gulf coast. >> good morning to you, mika. got some new info in from the national hurricane center, still a category 3, and now we're closing in on the coastline of southwest louisiana. so let me give you the latest update. you can see on the radar here, rain bands are mauoving on shor. as the day goes on, the conditions will get worse and worse. we still have hurricane warnings from beaumont, to lafayette. this is exactly the same location where hurricane laura as category 4 hit six weeks ago.

here's the latest, it's only 160 miles away from the louisiana coast. it is moving due north at about 12 miles per hour. houston you're on the very weak said of the storm. new orleans you're far to the right. the dead center portion is lake charles to lafayette, louisiana. we're expecting a landfall at around 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. this evening, likely as category 2 hurricane. we will see storm surge problems, rainfall problems, and of course the wind will be an issue, and then it rains itself out over the southeast. the number one killer in all hurricanes or most hurricanes is storm surge. we expect 7 to 11 feet water rises along the southern louisiana coast. that's a pretty remote marshy area, and it's the same exact spot that had a similar, if not worse storm surge from laura. this is the problem, i think, lake charles 94 miles per hour wind gusts are possible, and you have to remember, about 20% of the roofs have blue tarps protecting them right now because they weren't fibsxed in the last six weeks. imagine the roofs getting ripped

out and upwards of 6 to 10 inches on top of it. another high impact weather event and hurricane coming this afternoon. you're watching moer"morning jo" we'll be right back.

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the president's doctor released a memo claiming trump had been symptom free for more than 24 hours. but last night it appeared he was still showing symptoms, although it's important to keep in mind that people cough. i cough. we cough on the air, sometimes we have to clear our throats. so we want to be careful, but listen to the president in his interview with sean hannity last night, who by the way, kept asking him, when were you last tested. in the context of his covid diagnosis, it seems clear he is

still potentially in some respiratory distress. >> the last time i had a big problem, they oscillated my mics when i had the one debate, the three debates with hillary. i think the first debate they -- excuse me. on the first debate, they oscillated the mic. >> will you encourage your supporters to get out and vote early? >> well, i want them to vote, but i will say this, absentee is okay because absentee ballots -- excuse me. absentee ballots are fine because absentee ballots you request. >> that was pruesident trump lat night with sean hannity. could have been clearing his throat. i would point out there was an entire cottage industry looking at the way hillary clinton coughed in some of her events in 2016 and reading a lot into

that. let's go to dr. vin gupta who's been treating covid patients for seven, eight months now. i want to zero in on something you pointed out yesterday, which is that this window that the president is talking about, he was diagnosed on thursday night, he believes and his doctor has said he can go sout aout and dos on saturday. they're looking at a ten-day window. you point to a 20-day window for a patient with the symptoms president trump has shun. can you explain that a little bit? >> good morning, willie. happy to, especially for the benefit of the american people because examples matter. presidential examples matter, and so this is the thinking here. the president we know has severe covid-19 pneumonia. i've gotten some pushback, well, how do you know in the absence of a ct scan. that's where clinical judgment comes into play. i'm a pulmonologist. we deal with this all the time. he had an oxygen saturation

below 94%. he has shortness of breath, he's getting treatment as though he has covid-19 pneumonia. that's all consistent. he has the diagnosis. he's coughing, you know're righ there's lots of reasons for cough. but he's just getting over pneumonia. it's all consistent. in that clinical stem, his own cdc issues a guideline saying you need 20 days of isolation if you've had severe consequences from covid-19 pneumonia or severe covid-19 pneumonia the classical definition, meaning even if he's symptom free. it doesn't matter. he can still be shedding virus for up to 20 days after the onset of symptoms, so the earliest he should be in any way engaging with anybody outside of a bubble in the white house masked, distanced of course, in any case is towards the end of this month, certainly not tomorrow, and it's unconscionable that his doctor is willing to put a white coat behind this crazy notion that ten days is enough.

it's not, and it's sending the wrong message to the american people that ten days after a severe infection is good enough, in your opini number one, that symptom resolution is also any useful metric. we know that's not useful with when it comes to viral shedding when you've had the infection. he's promoting misleading information to the american public. comiing up, ten lessons fora post-pandemic world. we'll bring in the author of that new book, fareed sa car ya next on "morning joe." how about no no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no only discover has no annual fee on any card.

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we are making tremendous progress with this horrible disease that was sent over by china. china will pay a big price for what they did to the world and to us. >> all right, that was president trump in a taped address from the white house yesterday blaming china for the coronavirus pandemic. >> that's interesting, back january 24th actually tweeted and tweeted his thanks to president xi saying how much he appreciated how transparent china had been and on behalf of the american people he just wanted to say thank you, president xi.

>> mm-hmm. joining us now president of the council on foreign relations richa richard haass. he's the author of the book "the world, a brief introduction" and also the host of fareed zakaria gps on cnn, he's out with a new book entitled "ten lessons for a post-pandemic world." it's great to have you both. >> great to have you both, fareed, i'm especially grateful that you are here because -- >> i know where this is going. >> -- because richard haas has stopped paying me royalties for saying the pandemic did not change history. it just expedited trends, which actually was a great insight. thank god you're here because we're now going to get ten more critical insights on the new post-covid world we're living in. >> richard and i pay each other royalties all the time, so it

all washes out. >> good, so tell us, fareed, what are some of the most important lessons that we are learning from covid, and how is it going to shape our world moving forward? >> well, i think one of the most central ones relating to what we were just -- you were just talking about with trump is it's very useful to think, to understand our response to covid by putting it in comparative perspective. trump says it's all about china, but look at a place like taiwan. taiwan is right next to china, gets millions of tourists from china every year, had its first covid cases before the united states. taiwan with a population of 22 million has had seven covid deaths. new york state by comparison has had 35, 34,000, right? the problem has not been china or, you know, where the virus came from. the problem has been our inept response. to put it very bluntly, the

problem is not china. the problem is donald trump. it goes beyond trump because for four decades now, we have had an attitude towards the federal government that said as ronald reagan famously said, government is not the solution. it is the problem. grover norquest says my goal is to get the federal government so small that i can take it into my bathtub and drown it. steve bannon says i want to deconstruct the state. if your mission is to destroy, deconstruct, and drown the federal government it's not going to perform so well during a pandemic. that's one of my lessons. it's not quantity of government you have, but the quality of government you have, and the quality of american government has been shown in this pandemic to be very bad. >> well, let's talk about that point for one moment. it's the quality of government, and it reminds me and richard and i have talked about the truman administration, harry truman was perhaps the last man that the establishment would

have expected to carry on fdrs legacy, and do it in such an extraordinary way, but the secret to truman's success was he listened to dean atchison. he listened to george kenn kenn listened to george marshal. he had the best and the brightest of his time, and he listened. the quality of government was about as good as truman could have wished for, and he followed their advice. >> that's exactly right. i mean, if you think about the federal government of the united states in the 1940s, even in the 30s, you know, roosevelt's brain trust, the 40s, the 50s, eisenhower continued this tradition, there was a real pride that people took in being in government, the federal government was fairly lean. it tried to do big things, but it did them in a very cost effective way. the guy who ran the marshal plan famously said this is one of the first government programs to have come in under budget and

wound itself down. that was the pride people took. you contrast that with now, and you know, all people talk about when they talk about the federal government is it's ineffective. it's inefficient, and yet, we want it, we expect it to solve all these problems that we confront. so there's a huge mismatch between our ambitions for the government and the way we fund, organize, and exercise power through it. that is, as i say, trump has a lot to do with it. this breed of republicans has a lot to do with it, but it's even broader than that. we have to rethink. we've got to learn from this failure. one of the things i talk about in the book is the countries that have done well from taiwan to south korea to new zealand, even germany, are countries that went through some failure and then learned from it and learned how to reorganize themselves, reorganize their states. we take the view that, you know, i mean, you listen to donald trump, every day it's america is perfect.

america is beautiful. america is fantastic. it's very hard if you're intoxicated with that kind of american exceptionalism to learn anything. >> hey, fareed, it's willie, congratulations on the book. i want to ask you about another one of the points on your list, that is inequality. that has been put into stark relief again in the last seven months in terms of health care, in terms of education, in terms of people who have the means to leave cities, to leave hot spots where the virus. is that permanent in your eyes, and has history shown us that inequality does, in fact, deepen in these moments? >> you know, it's a great point, willie. i have a very sad answer. it looks like the answer is yes, and it's going to get worse. there's so many ways to think about this, but if you look at the number of people who have lost their jobs, it is disproportionately the poorest, the most weak, the most vulnerable among us. look, we're doing fine, right? and bankers are doing fine, and even doctors while pressed are

doing fine, but the restaurant workers, the people who work in hotels, the people who work on cruise ships, all those industries have been destroyed, and you see that in the data. this is the first recession in 30 or 40 years that's as far back as i looked where the bottom 25% has just cratered. most of the time the top and the bottom lose jobs in a recession about the same amount. that's not true here, and you see it with companies, right? amazon is tloohriving. the independent book stores are in trouble. walmart is thriving. the mom and pop hardware store is not. these inequalities are becoming muff, mu much, much greater. in the face of this rising inequality, the fact that you have a congress that is not willing to act, not willing to extend these benefits is crazy because we will face -- if this goes on, we're going to face a social revolution because you are having structural changes

which make inequality worse. you have cyclical changes that are making it worse. in washington they seem largely unconcerned. >> richard, let's talk about an issue we've talked about for some time, and that is how the interagency process has broken down. i don't mean to get too far into the weeds, but it matters when we're talking about the quality of government. we of course see donald trump disregarding his experts, always believing that he was the smartest man in the room no matter what, disregarding the advice of the best and the brightest. let's be really honest right now, we heard the same complaints about barack obama, that he always thought he was the smartest guy in the room, that he blew the interagency process to pieces. we heard this from people who worked in his administration and the decisions were reduced to dennis mcdonough, ben rhodes and himself. you can say the same with george w. bush who didn't want to hear what his secretary of state had to say about iraq because he said i never asked colin powell

because i knew colin powell was against the war. how important is it that if joe biden is elected that he rebuilds the inner agency process especially as it pertains to america's foreign policy? >> joe, it's critically important. whoever's the next president, you can choose everything from your running mate to your cabinet. the one thing you can't choose is your inbox, and the inbox that's going to greet the next president daunting isn't even half of it. it's an extraordinary inbox of international challenges against a backdrop of our truly divided, weakened society because of the covid, the economy, race issues, what have you. process and people are central. there's nothing inevitable about history. i've been lucky enough to work for four presidents and who's there? who's around them matters both in terms of process. process protects a president. you never want to be surprised if you're the president. you want to hear all the ideas before you make a decision, and

people introduce ideas. you were talking about truman. atchison could fairly call his memoir because it was truly creative. we have not met that test after the cold war 30 years ago or more recently. i'm more struck by the total lack of creativity and innovation when it comes to american foreign policy, when it comes to basically bringing about an international system than in any way is adequate to the challenges we face. >> richard, a two-part question for you. one for your cfr hat. i know the cfr has released a report about pandemic preparedness. i'd like to know how waer doie' doing. secondly, how it pertains to your amazing book, "the world: a brief introduction" can you give our viewers a sense of the type of introduction they could get to the world in the next 27 days given the weaknesses and the exposure the president is giving

this country? >> the united states is sending a terrible example to the -- you know, we've come a long ways, mika, since being the shining city on a hill. fareed talked about our incompetence in dealing with covid, the president's ramps the last few days, the threats to his political opponents and the rest is quite extraordinary. how in the world can we criticize china over hong kong or anybody just about. we're just draining the currency from the respect account around the world for the united states. plus, while we're sorting ourselves out at home, there's no pause button out there. the world never goes to the united states, okay, you americans, sort yourselves out. we'll just hang around and wait for you for a couple of years. we see what china is doing, essentially the world is moving on in ways that are bad for american interests, bad for peace, prosperity, freedom

around the world, and this ties into you were good enough to ask me about the covid report rejust published yesterday at the council on foreign relations, what it basically says is there's going to be future pandemics. this is not a one-off. we have got to learn the lessons. fareed said that failure is a great teacher. that might be the only silver lining because we have failed spectacularly here. it came here, yes, you can hang that a bit on china and the w.h.o., but virtually everything since, i'm so strung by the range and the variation in the quality of national response, and this is true of authoritarian systems and democracies. you have russia and iran that have failed, you have the united states, brazil and india that have also failed. it's not whether you're a democracy or an authoritarian system, it's the quality of what you do. we've got to learn here at home and strengthen international health machinery. what we have now is clearly not up to the task. >> fareed, going back to your list of ten lessons, one of them

is about american cities. those of us who live in new york city have been hearing for several months, that new york city is dead. it's been hollowed out in many ways, but we know it will be back. you invoke aristotle and the renaissance in explaining how the cycle of cities go from moments like this and how, in fact, they do come back. >> yeah, you know, this is a familiar pattern. people always flee cities in times of trouble. everyone fled florence, i think half the city emptied out during the bubonic plague and then they came back a few decades later and created the renaissance. philadelphia, actually, was emptied out during the -- i think it was the late 18th century. there was a yellow fever outbreak, which actually decimated the city. i like to yuse the phrase becaue it's one of the rare phrases where one can use it accurately. one out of every ten people in philadelphia was kigdlled by th plague. jefferson who hated cities said this is the end of cities in

america. turned out not to be true. london built back better. it used to be a wooden city, they turned it into a brick and stone city. we will go through the cycle. it could be somewhat painful. of course it depends on the quality of city management, but fundamentally, the reason for this is not also some kind of historical nostalgia. people come to cities because you make more money in cities. people are more economically productive in cities, and the reason is because of synergy, because of working together, because of accidental connections, all those kind of things that build social and economic capital are actually more true today than they were before. if you look at the map, the top 100 cities in the united states produce something like 65% of the gdp of the country while occupying about 5% of the land mass of the united states. so that dynamic is still at work, and for those of us who have been in new york as you say, it's clear, i mean, i think something like 3.5 million

people are using the subway every day with no big spikes. you can manage a city effectively. you can do it even in a pandemic, you just -- you know, you need to be -- you need to be taking government seriously. you need to be taking best practices seriously, and if you do that, cities remain the fauch, nfauc future. everywhere around the world everyone is urbanizing. the great trend of the last 30 or 40 years has been urbanizing and it's because of what aristotle said all those years ago, man is by nature, human beings are by nature social people. we want to socialize. >> and along that line, richard haas, i remember i was talking to jeff when jeff was talking about moving ge out of connecticut to boston, and i was saying the tax crush is not really that great if you're going to massachusetts, and he

said he said, yeah, but you don't understand that right now companies have been leaving connecticut for the past, you know, 20 yearsment. i go up to boston, my people are going to be around the smartest and most gifted people in the world, and the creative energy that they will get off of each other will make a huge difference in all of our developing products, and you know, that's sort of what fareed is saying, at the end of the day, there really is no substitute for a lot of these learning centers and urban centers. >> yeah, i think that's right in two ways. one is there's limits to how effective any businesses operating remotely or virtually. there is something to be said for the water cooler, people coming together to be creative. it's often the way good ideas happen. it could also really help with execution and implementation. as you said in the broader sense, cities are ecosystems, socially, personally,

intellectually, culturally, and that's why by and large innovation is associated with cities which also now obviously include the great universities, and it's the coming together of these institutions that's so critical. i think we've got a challenge in this country where politically we have a biased territory if you look at the senate, if you look at the electoral college, and we have an economic and demographic reality that's closely correlated with urban areas, and it's this disconnect between the two that in some ways i think is one of the growing sources of friction in the politics of this country. >> can i just point out -- >> richard is making this point from his estate in the hudson valley, not in a city. >> yes. >> all right. here we go. >> cheap shot. cheap shot. >> wow. i appreciate it. i appreciate it. fareed and richard, stay with us. >> we will be back -- >> try not to fight. >> we'll be back with fareed and

the country squire along with nbc's keir simmons live from moscow with a look at what we'll face whoever wins november's elections while dealing with russia. also, joe mentioned harry truman earlier, we want to take a moment to note that joe's new book "saving freedom: truman, the cold war, and the fight for western civilization" is coming out on november 24th. you can preorder it right now. keep it right here on "morning joe." how will we do it, at a time like this?

we've been asked that before. and through pandemics, and depressions, wars that split a nation, and fractured the world. americans have always found a way to vote and make their voices heard. so stand with the national council on election integrity and help make sure every vote is counted. no matter who you vote for, or how. because while this election may feel different, we all call america home.

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whoever wins the presidential election will be faced with a slew of pressing issues on the international stage. nbc news senior international correspondent keir simmons is taking a look at the biggest foreign policy challenges with russia perhaps topping that list. keir joins us now from moscow. keir. >> reporter: hey, mika, good morning, in a speech this week,

president putin weighed in for the first time on the american elections. he criticized vice president biden's what he called sharp an anti-russian rhetoric and . i've got to say, in my conversations with kremlin fini officials i've known their mood toward america to be darker. whoever is president next year will inherit this because it's clear on both sides of the atlantic views have hardened. president putin has dominated russia for decades spanning the presidencies of clinton, bush, obama, and trump, and he's not done considering staying in office through the next four presidential terms through 2036. >> this is a one-man show. this is a dictatorship. you can hang all the camouflage you want on it, but this is a dictat dictatorsh

dictatorship. >> reporter: over time putin's policies have become increasingly adversarial, now america faces a russian leader who doesn't forget. >> i looked the man in the eye. i found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. i was able to get a sense of his soul. >> and who has lived through multiple awkward attempts at reconciliation. >> we want to reset our relationship. >> reporter: do you think it's fair to say that america has struggled with russia for decades because ultimately it hasn't known what to do about president putin or even understood him? >> well, president putin makes it clear who he is and what he's about. his history as a kgb agent and his actions indirectly interfering in the 2016 u.s. presidential election and his determination to do so again makes it clear that he is a person who does not respect western norms and values. >> reporter: during the past

decade, russian fighters have confronted america's allies in ukraine and fought alongside america's enemies in syria propping up bashir al assad. >> their approach is one of sabotage. their approach is one where it's trying to take us down. that's the only way they'll be able to go up. >> reporter: like in judo, putin has made his opponent's weakness his strength. >> during president obama's tenure, he drew a line in the sand in syria, didn't back that up and shortly after that we saw russian invade crimea. under this president, we have seen an unwillingness to confront vladimir putin on almost any front. >> reporter: instead confronting questions about his relationship with putin. his willingness to publicly cast

doubt on russian election interference in 2018. >> i have president putin. he just said it's not russia. i will say this, i don't see any reason why it would be. >> reporter: causing a backlash even among republicans and former members of his administration. >> this campaign of disruption, disinformation and denial is aided by any leader who doesn't acknowledge it. >> reporter: today u.s./russian relations are frozen. putin is furious. even in 2018 unveiling a new missile with an animated video showing it hitting florida, home to the president's mar-a-lago resort. >> reporter: a new nuclear arms race seems a real possibility. whoever is president, must quickly decide whether to renew the last remaining arms control agreement between the white house and the kremlin. the deadline is february.

meanwhile america's allies in europe are grappling with the shift in approach to nato under the trump administration and russia's assassination attempts against putin opponents combined with a heavy handed crack down against internal protests and opposition. >> i would personally wish that the russian federation comes back on an international level but they need to play by the rules. >> we want to hold out the hand of friendship to the russian people. but president putin's actions, the invasion of crimea, the poisoning, these are not the actions of a leader who wants to stand alongside democratic leaders on the world stage. >> reporter: a close ally of president putin and russian business leader told us just like any country, there are factions within russia. >> it's important that just as in america there are different

viewpoints so there is a different points in russia. a hostile attitude of the u.s. toward russia makes the more conservative the most focused on russia being by itself, people in russia stronger. as a stronger u.s. pushes russia, the weaker the liberal wing will be and the stronger the hardline will be. >> reporter: that's unlikely to persuade many across the atlantic, a potential biden presidency has promised to rebuild alliances with america's allies. >> reporter: an investment banker is seen with putin all the time. i thought this quote was fascinating and i wanted you to react to it. he says the stronger the u.s. pushes russia, the weaker the liberal wing will be and the stronger the hardline wing will be. >> there may be some merit, but that doesn't mean that should governor what we do and what's

in our national security interest. we need, going forward, a policy that is very clear about what's acceptable and what's not acceptable that stands up for the values that are important to us, that rebuilds our relationships and alliances around the world. >> reporter: while even a second term, president trump would continue to face those in his own party determined not to let president putin off the hook. >> he's not going to have an epiphany and decide they're going to be a peace-loving, first-world country. >> reporter: it's said that president putin plays a weak hand well. any american president who underestimates him does so at their peril. and, guys, two of president putin's foreign policy successes is widely talked about is making russia more relevant in the middle east and building an alliance with china. it's that alliance with china

we're going to look at in another report. that alliance that should be worrying washington, russia has half the world's nuclear weapons, china now has the biggest navy in the world. figuring out the right approach to that situation from the america side, that is going to be a task for the next president. >> nbc's keir simmons live for us in moscow. thank you very much. >> richard haass, i remember watching an interview many years ago and i must say, it was extraordinarily impressed. he played resentment as well as anybody i've ever seen. but i asked the doctor afterwards, i said tell me about him. despite the fact that he was a cold-war hawk his entire life, he said he plays a weaker hand better than any diplomat on the world stage. he's extraordinarily skilled. you could apply that to putin

and russia over the past decade, could you not? >> you could, but i would point out a couple of things, it is a weak hand. russian has a population 0.1 of china. it doesn't have a serious modern economy. but i wouldn't exaggerate the russian challenge. i would say china is a much more significant challenge to the united states than russia and i would also say such issues as climate change, infectious disease, and proliferation, i have a long list of things that i would probably rate at least as high if not higher than russia. i don't mean to downplay it and i don't know if -- how the urban cowboy who has a place a few miles from here, dr. zakaria would say about it. >> wow, it continues!

>> but i think we have to take russia seriously. what putin is willing to do is do things. he has cyber, he has military force. what's interesting about him is how unrestrained he is. but we're not going back to the old cold war. we have other challenges that really -- to inform american foreign policy. >> fareed, what is the best course of action, the best approach for, a, if it happens president biden to restore the balance and the relationship and then continue into the future with russia? >> it's a great question because the truth is, it is worth focusing in russia in one sense. everything richard said was correct. but russian policy is broken right now and it's broken because u.s. foreign policy toward russia is intertwined with donald trump's narcissism about the 2016 election, whether he actually won, all of that kind of thing. as a result of that, you know,

he can't be too tough on russia, he can't be too soft on russia. he vacillates. his administration provides ukraine with weapons while he tells us putin did nothing wrong. it's a bizarre dysfunctional policy as in several areas but in russia, it means that we really have had a breakdown. what we need to think about, you know, winston churchill said about russia, it's a riddle wrapped in a mystery hidden inside an enigma. but the key to understanding is russian national interest. but the key to our strategy has to be, we don't want russia and china aligned. these are the two great powers outside the western system, outside the orbit. we've got to find a way to have good relations with both, good

productive relations where we established deterrence and don't let them gang up. and that is probably just too sophisticated a strategy for trump who is just concerned about getting on with putin. >> it's a wonderful, important, insightful conversation between the urban cowboy and the country squire. fareed zakaria, thank you so much. richard haass, thank you as well. his book "the world, a brief introduction." gerrit cole going to the mound and throwing the rock. >> enough. the show is over. >> i speak for america when i say go yankees, beat the cheaters. >> you speak for america. i'm speaking now. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi, there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's friday, october 9th, let's get smarter. president trum