hi there, everyone. it's 4:00 in the east. the president's bet that voters would go along with his covid denial and embrace his open hostility towards mask and social distancing is not paying off where he needed it to pay off. the 2016 trump coalition is in disarray. and while we have exhaustively covered the core trump voter of the last four years, we've dramatically underreported on the frailty of the trump coalition. large parts of which appear to have disbanded and real aligned themselves with democratic candidates, perhaps making permanent the shift first documented in the 2018 midterm elections. a new poll out today proves this theory might be true. "new york times" poll shows joe biden robbing trump of every advantage on every issue including trump's long-time edge on the economy. from that "times" poll, quote,

trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by biden in the coming days. some of the poll numbers on issues include a 12-point advantage for joe biden on coronavirus. a six-point advantage for joe biden on choosing the next supreme court justice. and a six-point edadvantage on w and order. trump staked his presidency on a miscalculation that voters would share his dark view of law and order and just wouldn't notice that it's donald trump who is encouraging felony voter fraud in north carolina, commuting the sentences of convicted felons and ignoring u.s. intelligence about bounties being placed on the heads of american soldiers. that conduct coupled with the crippling effects of the pandemic on the economy has left trump with zero structural advantages in this race. with 14 days until voting ends,

anything can always happen, but millions of americans have already voted, or are voting right now. and these numbers would be daunting for the most disciplined of campaigns and candidates and we all know by now, trump is not that. he will also face a new limit on his unbridled sell p on thursday in the final debate in the form of a mute button. the commission on presidential debates announcing last night that they'll mute both kpd candidates for periods of time to help mitigate the interruptions, mainly from donald trump, that we saw in the first debate. it's a strategy that the host of "fox and friends" took out for a spin with trump this morning and sure sounds like trump might not be getting the hang of it yet. >> what's going to change for your strategy, regardless of moderator, format, mike? what's your strategy, are you using anybody different to get you ready and after studying and dueling with joe biden once already, what have you learned? you going to interrupt less?

>> joe lies and he lies a lot and he'll say things that are crazy. >> so, will you take some of your time to correct him? >> they will put an ad in about something that never happened and pretend like it happened. >> will you take some of your time and answer the previous question, like mike pence did and then answer their question? >> well, look, i do my own debating. i do fine. >> just a follow up. after that first debate, there are many who suggested if you let joe biden share his ideas, america might not be too keen on those ideas. will you change your strategy in this last debate from your first debate? >> well, i may do that, actually, the interesting thing, they said, if you let him talk, he'll lose his train of thought, because he's gonzo, and i understand that, but i also understand that as he's going down the line and issuing lies, you know, generally, it's okay to, you know, really attack that.

>> polls like the ones in today's "new york times" tend to focus the minds of presidential candidates, but the new numbers didn't seem to have that effect on donald trump, who in the last 24 hours found time to train his attacks on one tony fauci. adam schiff, the entire united states supreme court, joe biden and his son, hunter biden, the commission on presidential debates, our own beloved kristen welker, who will be the moderator of the next debate and, as if it's still four years ago, hillary clinton. the info us cuinfo us canned ca where we start. eli stokeles is back, also with us, msnbc contributor and professor and chair of the department of african-american studies at princeton university, eddie gloud is here and our friend donnie deutsch is here. eli, i have to start with you, because i know you are reporting on all these threads. i mean, the f"fox and friends" tape is so instructive.

you could see it on their faces. it's jerry maguire, help us help you. help us convince you that if you stop interrupting -- and he can't stop interrupting the three anchors of "fox and friends." >> it's unlikely that this debate is going to have a jerry maguire-esque ending where the president changing course. he just doesn't change course. i mean, even in the interview, he was talking over the anchos s asking him the questions just as he talked over joe biden in the debate. we know from our reporting that president trump really just doesn't respect joe biden at all. even less than he respected hillary clinton four years ago. and we saw it come out when he was on the stage next to him in cleveland. we saw the same manic behavior during the nbc town hall last week and, you know, we know he has advisers urging him to let biden, to give biden a little more rope, but whether the president is actually capable of doing that, it's unclear. and it certainly doesn't look

like he is, based on the kind of increasingly unhinged messaging and rhetoric and attacks that we've been seeing from him. if you had gone back another day, you would have had the graphic about michigan governor gretchen whitmer and leading the "lock her up" chant against her, though she was the target of a kidnapping plot. the president is just leaning in, exciting his supporters and based on our reporting, turning off a lot of people who are in the middle, who are just exhausted after four years of this and there's just no reason to believe at this point that in the final two weeks of the campaign the president is capable of changing his tone and changing his argument. >> you know, and that's such an important point, eddie, because i want to lay this out there, we have aired, in talking for four years about the trump voter, and going back to them every time he does something outrageous and after the "access hollywood" tape, yeah, still with him, afterunties on the heads --

yeah, we were calling the wrong numbers. the coalition was barely enough to give him the kind of electoral victory he eked out. there were small margins in three states and that left in 2018. and i wonder if we have sort of missed the mark here, i mean, i think the -- my coverage should have focused on the onces who left in '18 and were any of them coming back instead of the people that go to the rallies maskless and without any social distance. of course they're still with him. they always will be with him. >> right, i mean, you know, when we were trying to do the postmortem on the 2016 election, we knew that he lost the popular vote. we understood that there was the kind of overlap between the bernie sanders voter and the trump voter. we understood that there was a suppressed turnout among african-americans. that the inside straight consisted of a number of different factors. but we read his election, some of us did, as a kind of genius move, as a kind of, you know,

assessment of the state of the country and in some ways, it was. but we have seen in special elections, nicolle, as well as in the midterms, that that lucky streak, right, was broken, that it was not -- it did not hold. and look, in the context of this debate, donald trump is too thin-skinned to sit quietly by, as he receives a critique. he's going to shout, he's going to -- he's going to act like the spoiled child that he is, even if the mic is muted. so, we should prepare ourselves for the undisciplined man, the spoiled child, the reckless politici politician, that we have seen over the last 3 1/2 years, and i think you're right to say that we perhaps were wrong in our say seszment of what brought him into office, but we know who he is and what he's done while he's been in office, nicolle. >> and i guess my only point, donnie, and putting this out there, it makes the polls, what's underneath the poll numbers, really important. because you have been talking

for years now about joe biden's imperative strategic need to change this message on the economy. i want to show you some joe biden tape and ask if you think he's succeeded. the polls suggest that he has. let's watch. >> unemployment is up due to the pandemic. an economic outlook remains very uncertain and very mishandled. across ohio, in this country, folks are worried about making their next rent payment or mortgage payment. whether or not they can purchase a prescription or put food on the table. worried about school and their kids. they see -- they see the people at the top doing better and better during this crisis and wondering, who is looking out for me? that's donald trump's presidency. more than 215,000 -- i think it's now 217,000 -- dead

americans because of covid-19. >> donnie, is that what you were encouraging, this sort of laser focus on the economic despair that accompanies an even wider spread, the physical and the health despair? >> yeah, i mean, take back what trump ridiculously stole, which is a populous economic message, which is the farthest thing republicans and trump are about. and biden's done it beautifully. we were all nervous about biden as a campaigner, did he still have it, and he's been pitch perfect. i mean, he early on took away the message of bringing jobs back here, and the fact that trump has not countered on the economy. if i was advising trump, would have been a message saying, look, you can't entrust the economy to biden. instead, for some bizarre reason, he kind of just handed that to biden and health care, also.

and so, when you combine economy plus covid, it's a pretty winning strategy and i think it's one of the reasons we're left with trump flailing the way he is. at this point, 14 days before the election, there's nowhere to go except that silly old bag of tricks which feels like "the celebrity apprentice" instead of "the apprentice" and we know how that did in the ratings. >> eli, it really is about that. the trump voters should already be with him. and if he hadn't attacked the mail-in vote, they should be banking those votes already. and a losing campaign, i know this, i've been on losing campaigns, a losing campaign spends the final weeks kind of on a hail mary, trying to put back together a winning coalition, trying to take vote from the opponent, so, donald trump needs to stop talking to his base, he should only be talking to a biden voter. his only messages should be directed to the lead biden vote, because he's so far behind biden, he's nine points behind

nationally, which makes the electoral map very tricky, he needs to pull big chunks of the biden vote in more than a couple of states. and yet today, he was on day two of raging against tony fauci, in a second day of brawl against him, i don't have the tweet, but he's still at it on twitter. who -- is it that no one can tell him to stop or does he think this is a winner? >> it's largely that no one can tell him to stop and also he thinks this is a winner and he's just looking to repeat exactly what he did in 2016, trying to recreate the october surprise instead of comey and the letter. he's hoping to get some traction about the "new york post" story that's been widely disavowed and is very dubious and he's trying to do that. to your point, joe biden is doing exactly what you say the president should be doing, he's airing ads with cindy mccain, talking to undecided voters. he's trying to offer a moderate message. then, on the other side, you have the president, who is just,

you know, in the recent days gotten even more inward looking, more self-pityself-pitying, morn the stump. the issues you laid out, health care, the coronavirus, the economy, the president has almost avoided talking about those issues to a large degree and spent a lot more time talking about cultural issues. talking about democrats trying to indoctrinate children through education that talks about slavery. i mean -- you know, talk about monuments. this is what donald trump is focused on, these sort of divisive things that thrill his base and that give him cheers and applause at rallies. and that feels good for him. but it does feel like his rallies these last few days have been mostly about soothing his our fe own fears rather than the fears of the american people who have their kids at home and can't go back to school, don't know where their next paycheck is coming from, watching congress fumble around, not able to pass another stimulus here. i mean, those are the concerns that the president could be talking to. you're not hearing him put a whole lot of pressure on congress from the rally stage.

yesterday, he said he was pandemic out. wasn't just attacking fauci, he was basically saying, whatever, i'm tired of hearing about the pandemic. just does not seem like a winning message when i talk to republicans and democrats who are running races across the country. they actually agree that what the president has been doing these last couple of days seems more self-destructive than anything else and liable to really cost republicans down the ballot. >> you know, eddie, eli makes a brilliant point. biden is the one running like he's behind. this is something my colleague mike thmemoli talked today. today in the 2020 race, trump insisting to his team that he can still win, joe biden insisting he can still lose. and some of the state polls are extremely close. north carolina has biden up just one, pennsylvania, which, i think, both campaigns view as

essential, probably must-win for the trump team, there are other paths for biden, but it's an important state and there are bragging rights and pride involved, pennsylvania lead for biden is just four. let me ask you about that and let me add this. biden, i think, added six points to his lead after the debate. and what do we have this week? what is biden sort of down prepping for? the debate. stch. >> i think, you know, i think this is really important. first of all, they learned the lesson of the 2016 election, nicolle. and that is not to take for granted what the polls are saying. to continue to exercise and execute the ground game. to continue to urge democratic voters and to turnout you to continue to urge those who are undecided to decide on behalf of the biden campaign. so, they're out there doing work. look, the question that's being answered, which fear will win the day? it will be the fear of covid-19? we're on the verge of a quarter

of a million americans dead. the fear of economy collapsing or the fear of democracy collapsing or is it the fear of a socialist takeover? is it the fear of black and brown people invading suburbs? right? which fear will win the day? and i think the way in which vice president biden is on the stump, his messaging, as donnie and eli has said, is right on point. and i think the data that we're seeing, the poll data that we're seeing, shows that it's tighteni tightening. but i don't think it's taking into account, nicolle, the excitement among black voters and brown voters and young voters. the turnout game will decide what this election will look like at the end. >> donnie, you have, over the last four years, beared your soul. when he's enraged the country or his critics, i think you've sort of channeled that rage. what are you feeling now? because it seems like you -- you are seeing him as sort of a flop

on the stump, performatively and strategically, but i don't know a democrat or biden supporter that isn't just beyond anxiety-ridden and fearful about what happens in two weeks. so, how are you feeling? >> well, nicolle, as my shrink, as i text and call you in the most heated moments of debate and you talk me off the wall and i talk you off the wall, so -- >> only sometimes. >> you know, i -- i do feel, look, i'm nervous like everybody else, but i do feel trump is going to lose. i actually feel he's going to lose significantly. and what we're seeing from him now is some of that awareness. now, trump's life has been in chapters. he's just been playing a president. he was a real estate developer, he because tv star and he's getting ready, i believe, and i've said this on the show before, for his next act, which is going to be the trump tv network, the subscription model, make a billion dollars a year. in order to set that up, what would he be doing?

he'd be doing the red meat stuff that doesn't make sense in an election, but the hunter biden stuff, going after chris cuomo in the media, all the stuff you led with earlier on, is the stuff that's made for tv networks. so, i think whether's conscious or subconscious, he's setting himself up and i think at the debate you're going to see humor from him, still staying on red meat, but you're going to see -- picture in your mind, is this a guy that's running for another term of president or is this a guy setting himself up for his next act? i think that's a lot of what we're seeing right now, actually. >> that's so interesting. the conduct and even the performative pieces, certainly make more sense in that vein and we'll have to save this for next time but i wonder if rudy sees himself as the next roger ails because they certainly seem to be synced up as ever. donnie, eli, eddie, so -- watch this space. we'll see. when we come back, a victory

for voting rights in the united states supreme court thanks to john roberts siding with the liberals on that court. it effects the all-important state of pennsylvania and we'll tell you all about it. plus, trump wants more. more rallies, that is. how running is a tantrum-throwing toddler can imperil your campaign strategy exhibit 345. and qanon is here, no longer on the fringes, but comingled with the gop. we'll bring you new reporting from "the new york times" on that. all those stories when "deadline white house" continues. don't go anywhere. e" continues don't go anywhere. 133 million americans have pre-existing conditions

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>> about his political misfortunes and look for someone to give him a magic answer. >> yes. >> and he will not succeed in issuing an effective order to have federal marshals go to the polling places and inbound ballots. it won't happen. >> he can't do it because what? >> he does not have this absolute legal authority that he craves. >> right. >> we still are a country with constitutional and legal limits. i'm very confident that we'll have an election, voters will vote and we're going to have an outcome and it will be a legitimate outcome no matter what donald trump says and i can promise you that should he attempt to disrupt or undermine the election, he will fail. >> that was bob bower. he is the man leading the biden campaign's sizable legal operation speaking there with our friend john heilemann on showtime's "the circus" from this sunday night, providing an optimistic view of what we'll see two weeks from today. one of those legal limits that bower mentioned was seen in action yesterday when a tied supreme court voting 4-4, ruled

to allow election officials in pennsylvania to count mail-in bat lo ballots received up to three days after election day a procedure put in place because of the pandemic that republicans had tried to fight. joining us now to break this down, former u.s. attorney and msnbc contributor joyce vance and lily adams, senior spokesperson for the democratic national committee and adviser to the dnc war room. so, i watched this interview with bob bower and i thought that there were a couple of things going on. there was clearly an effort to reassure people like -- i was talking to donnie about this in the last block, people are on pins and needles just not knowing and this is where trump gets the advantage sometimes, because he will do anything, you prepare for anything. so, i guess my question for you is, how long have the preparations been going on and is there really a sense that the winning legal arguments and the winning tools, tactically, are on the side of people who are going to be for letting all the

votes count, getting to the bottom of the absentee same-day voting and early vote totals or is there more anxiety than appeared in that bower interview. >> well, look, i think that, you know, with this unprecedented threat to democracy, which has been donald trump, you're right, he's been willing to flout any norm, he's been willing to break any law, but it's been met with an unprecedented effort. the dnc and the biden campaign have been working hand in glove to put together the largest voter protection operation that's not only going to be in full force on election day, but is working, you know, tirelessly now, when 34 million votes have already been cast, which is a quarter of the number of votes cast in 2016. i think it's just indicative that there's one party, president trump and his party, who believes that if fewer people vote and are heard from, then they'll be successful, and that's because he's bungled the pandemic, he's caused a

recession, so, i think it's really telling that what they're most terrified of is people actually just, you know, voting and having their voices heard. >> yeah, i mean, joyce, the thing with trump is none of it is hidden in a secret document in a server, except the notes of the call with zelensky. all of this is on his twitter feed and his stump speech. my question for you, can you explain the significance of roberts' vote yesterday with the liberals? what was he voting to protect and does that all go out the window if there's an amy coney barrett on the court by election day? >> sure, nicolle. it's important to understand that the pennsylvania case, while a victory for voting rights, was a very limited victory. this case involved the pennsylvania state supreme court construing pennsylvania's constitution's right to vote and saying that it was okay in the

circumstances of the pandemic to extend pennsylvania's citizens ability to vote. so, to permit them to use dropoff boxes or to permit these other provisions, including the extended time for mailed in ballots to be received, permitting, in essence, ballots received by three days after the election to count. so, what happens in the u.s. supreme court on appeal is the republicans from pennsylvania are asking the supreme court to stay that decision, to say, no, you can't count these late received ballots. and the u.s. supreme court says, we will not stay the pennsylvania supreme court's ruling, it can go into effect, these late ballots are okay. justice roberts joins the traditionally more liberal wing of the party, now down to three members, in saying that there won't be a stay. so, this is a very limited holding. they could have different views on the substance of the issue were it to come back. and to your question, were that question to return to the court

with a newly confirmed justice barrett seated on the court, it seems unlikely that what happened this week in the supreme court would happen again, it looks like there would likely be five votes to impose far more restrictive rules on pennsylvania voters. >> and i guess if you just play that out, lily, i mean, that puts into motion a florida recount-like scenario in a state that is probably more important to trump but is important to everyone and -- my hunch is that what bob bower was speaking to was that that is what has been gamed out. i thought it was so interesting that when john heilemann said, you've got 600 lawyers, he said, i've got more. you've got 10,000 volunteers, he said, much more. is that the fear, that when the court changes, if these cases go back up or go the other way, and is that what bob bower is prepared for? >> yeah, i mean, look, i think you're prepared for anything when it involves donald trump,

but i think you're talking about bob bower and others who are the best in the business, they've been scenario-planning for months and there's thousands of lawyers who are prepared to make sure that every ballot is counted. so, you know, i feel very confident in their ability to do that. >> i want to get both of you on the record about something donald trump said on "fox and friends" this morning and this is going to feel like deja vu all over again for you, joyce, but he is still trying to get the bidens investigated for hunter biden's role in ukraine. let me play this for you and we'll try to break down the standing of one bill barr on the other side. >> 11 house republicans have sent a letter, they said the following, "we request that the department of justice immediately appoint an independent unbiased special counsel to investigate these issues that have been raised as well as any corresponding legal or ethical issues that might be uncovered from the former vice president's 47 years in public

office." will you be doing that? will you be -- >> we've got to get the attorney general to act. he's got to act. and he's got to act fast. he's got to appoint somebody. this is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election. and by the way, we're doing very well. we're going to win the election. we're doing very well. >> so, the war on bill barr is seemingly consuming a whole lot of donald trump's energy and attention here, joyce. what do you think is going on? >> you know, trump ultimately turns on everyone in his inner circle, because you just can't be enough of a sick cycophant t please him forever. he's done far too much damage to the justice department's integrity. he's tried to politicize the justice department. he's tried to use it in essence to damage his political opponents. it's unacceptable and i think what's the most troubling here is we have not heard the

attorney general speak out and say that doj and the prosecutors who he leads every day will not stand first, will not tolerate it, that they will open cases where there's pred case, if there should be a case here, they'll open it and if the facts don't support it, they won't and it's just that simple. the president doesn't get to make the call. >> well, and lily, i'll give you the last word here, because what barr has done is actually the opposite. there was some reporting in "the new york times" about ten days ago saying that barr has loosened regulations on bringing voter fraud cases and prosecuting them and freeing up u.s. attorneys to do so. how does a campaign prepare for an overtly activist attorney general who clearly takes his cues from donald trump? >> well, i think what we've seen from attorney general barr is that he's willing to, again, break every norm, he's willing to politicize the justice department, and so, i think the biden campaign and certainly we expect for the next 14 days, that because they can't win on the economy, because they can't win on his response to covid,

because they can't win on folks being better off today than they were four years ago, they're going to try everything else and it is going to be like throwing stuff at the wall from now until election day. >> that fox interview sounded a whole lot like stuff on the wall. joyce vance, lily adams, thank you for spending some time with us. up next, dr. anthony fauci brushing off trump's attacks the only way a grownup should. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

this week as the u.s. climbs towards its third peak of this pandemic, with more than 8.2 million coronavirus cases and more than 221,000 souls lost, donald trump is focused on his now daily campaign events. despite those startling numbers and despite all the expert advice against his large rallies. and despite his own wife canceling her rare scheduled appearance tonight due to a lingering cough from her own coronavirus infection. yesterday, on the same day this country added more than 65,000 new cases, nbc news learned that trump complained on a call with aides that there are too few rallies on his schedule and that he plans to soon be doing as many as five rallies per day. meanwhile, polls suggest trump is not fooling the majority of americans who say they're less likely to trust him for accurate information about covid since he caught it himself. and because of trump's dismissal

of science and attacks on scientists, dr. anthony fauci felt he had to respond. >> i focus totally on the health and the welfare of the people of this country. that's what i've devoted 50 years of my career towards, 36 of which were as the director of this institute. that's the only thing i really care about. that other stuff, you know, it's like in "the godfather," nothing personal, strictly business. as far as i'm concerned, you know? i just want to do my job and take care of the people of this country. that's all i want to do. >> let's bring into our conversation carol lee and dr. william schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at vanderbilt medical center. dr. schaffner, i have to ask you about tony fauci going full " d "godfather" there. the voting public is reaching the same conclusion. it's nothing personal, strictly business. and the business being, we want

main streets back open, we want kids back in schools and the only way to do that is to get down from this hideous number of 65,000 new cases that we had yesterday. >> well, i think tony is washing his hands, literally and figuratively of all the nonsense and focusing on the issue. if we could control the virus, if we could reduce its spread, then we can open up more comfortably, carefully. but we must do it carefully. there's no sense that we can just do it in a carefree fashion, but if we could control the virus's spread in the community, then, indeed, we could all enjoy each other's company at some distance in this new normal. >> dr. schaffner, do you think tony fauci is surprised that he is 14 days out from an election, the target of all of donald trump's attacks yesterday that

were made on camera, a majority of them were on tony fauci, who maintains, i think, a 68% credibility and trustworthy number from the american people, which, obviously, includes members of trump's own base. and again today, reupping his attacks. i don't think he called him an idiot again. but how weird is it for scientists to end up sort of being attacked by one candidate or the other 14 days before an election? >> well, i think i've seen tony interviewed and he's puzzled by all this and really quite distressed, also, because it's evoked a rather serious backlash on himself and his family from some members of the public. you mentioned his approval rating. well, in the infectious disease community, in the public health community, his approval rating is 150%. you can be sure. we're all very supportive of him because, as he said, he's focused on the health and well

being of the american population and that's what we all are trying to do at the same time. so, i think if we could keep ourselves focused on the main facts, wear the mask, social distancing, not those large groups, those are excel raccele events for the virus that are happening now, i think we could get the vie us under some degree of control, but we all have to work together on behalf of ourselves and everyone else around us. >> carol lee, is donald trump breaking local laws when he has these mass gatherings in these states? we wants five massive rallies a day. his own crowd numbers that he touted, we have no way of knowing if they're true, because he said them, they're probably not, but he said, i go out, we get 35,000, 40,000, 25,000, 15,000, we go boom, 15,000. i was looking for a verb, i

think we -- i think we found one in there, but i think he means that when we have rallies, we have tens of thousands of people at them. are there local officials who are increasingly anxious with the sort of upticks in cases happening to be in the same states that are being fought over by the two campaigns? >> we are seeing some of that, nicolle. and there's been a number of instances where the president's held a rally and cases of coronavirus through contact tracing are traced back to the president's rally. we also know that some states like ohio, for instance, will give waivers, essentially, where they say that political gathering don't fall under the mask mandates that are in local governments. but the president's numbers there, that might be 2016 numbers, that's not -- i've covered a number of his rallies, and that's not what's showing up there, it's just not. they're big, there are several thousand, but the spaces respect as big as they were in 2016.

these are typically open air airport hangars, some are enclosed partially, but they're not huge giant spaces that can hold 40,000 people. that's just not what's happening out there. what is happening out there is that the president doesn't have a lot of money with his campaign and he likes the feel of the rallies and the adulation and the vibe that he gets on the campaign trail. and those two things are during the pandemic are a recipe for the president to just plow ahead and do more rallies, because he feels like it makes him look strong, it's a good, frankly, it crystallizes, in his mind and in others minds, the contrast between him and joe biden, they wanted this to be about a choice, well, the president's very clearly showing what the choice is, he's out there, he's campaigning and he's saying things like, we're tired of the pandemic, we're not going to shut down again and joe biden is visually running an entirely different type of campaign and saying very different things. but the president, if anything in the next two weeks, wants to

hit the gas harder, he does not plan on scaling any of this back and a lot of it is because it's how he feels connected to his campaign, it's what he's used to, he likes the rallies, he likes being out there. at the same time, there are times when he goes to these rallies and he says things that come back to potentially hurt his campaign or, as you mentioned, sometimes there are individuals that go to his rallies that we later learn contracted coronavirus and that's not necessarily a good message for him, either. >> well, herman cain showed up at a rally in tulsa and was dead two weeks later. i want to ask you about joe biden's response, because new polling shows that joe biden has a 12-point advantage when it comes to coronavirus, so, i don't know what category he thinks he's gaining in from have these rallies, but biden's response to trump mocking him by saying, he's going to listen to the scientists, as though that were an attack line, biden responded this way. "president trump criticized me

for listening to the scientists. that's not an attack. that's a badge of honor." my question, carol, is, among -- whom does it work to say, the other guy, the other guy's going to listen to the scientists, that guy that knows more about pandemics than anybody in the world. with whom is that resonating? >> well, part of what we're seeing is that the president's really kind of muddling his own message or maybe saying what he really thinks in this condensed way. the initial message, if you talk to his aides, what he's trying to say is that he's focused on the economy and he would grow the economy and push the economy forward and not always just listen to medical experts who say you should lock everything down. that's obviously, as you noted, not exactly what the president is saying and by saying that, as you said, the biden campaign really seized on it and say, yes, you're exactly right, thank you for putting our message out there for us and, again, that's also why you hear that these rallies and the president being

out there so much, he really want s to do it and there are upsides to it according to him, but there are some downsides. >> like the spread of a deadly pandemic. carol sticking around. dr. william schaffner, thank you for being today's tony fauci whisperer. we appreciate it. still ahead for us, it's out there among republicans. new reporting on how qanon became something we actually have to talk about when we cover republican politics.

when you look at insane conspiracy theories like qanon seeping into the mainstream of the republican party, what that tells you is that there are no more guardrails within that media ecosystem and i think one of the biggest challenges is how do we re-establish some baselines of truth that at least the vast majority of people can agree to? >> former president barack obama asking a question that we will be dealing with way beyond trump's time in office. how do re-establish baselines for truth, baselines obama's successor has obliterated. "new york times" writes, urged

on by the president, who espousal of conspiracy theories has only intensified, qanon adherents are pushing such ideas into the conservative mainstream, alongside low taxes and limited limited government. people feel left out said one republican leader from georgia, qanon with the focus on criminal elites help them understand why. it is not about what we're doing wrong, it is the swamp, he told the times. joining us now, our friend frank figliuzzi. carol lee is also here. this feels like disinformation mixed with the grievance voter mixed with this dangerous moment of groups that appear to embrace and celebrate vigilanteism. what piece is this qanon merging

with the actual brand of the republican party? frank, sorry. >> if that's for me, nicolle, here is -- >> that is for you, frank. >> yep. we're seeing this play out before our eyes. there is the merger of the trump campaign strategy with what has quickly become a full blown cult. so it is not just kind of a peril peril -- a parallel association, we're seeing the trump campaign play to that demographic. would you love to beoy fly on wall when they decide they have to go down and lockdown people that the world is led by flesh eating pedophiles. that is astounding. and let me point to one example. last thursday in the town hall meeting with trump talking to savannah guthrie, she asked him about qanon. he said i don't know anything about it. but i do know that they're

against poeedophelia. and what happened soon thereafter, child porn is on what is claimed to be hunter bide and's laptop and the qanon folks loving this. just thinking this is a fulfilled prophecy. just like back in july, 2016, when president trump at a press conference said russia, if you're listening, i hope you find those emails. we're seeing his utterances play out in a kind of strategy that has become a reality for people. >> i have never heard all of those seemingly disconnected events last 72 hours tied together. frank, let me just follow up and ask you, it would seem that law enforcement only gets involved when there is an intersection of a potential crime. who is in charge of pushing back on the pre-criminal crazy activity? is that civil society, our

leaders, whose responsibility is that? >> wee all play a role in that. and it is certainly the law enforcement and the social media platforms and not forget that facebook and others are taking down the sites because it is falsehood. but you're right, there is a gap in the law here. and there is a gap for a reason. there is privacy and freedom of thought. of course we have to preserve that. but there is a dangerous gap because if law enforcement is not there to get in front of it, it is a real issue. an president obama in the clip you played, he talked about almost a de-programming that will have to occur with cult members. and some that is simply reminding people that their capable of independent thought and can think for themselves and taking down their sites from facebook and youtube helps them to take a breath and say, i

actually could have independent thought here. the other its to show them they're reality win. if biden an harris win, they're not monsters or communists or socialist, they may have a better plan for the health care and the economy. but don't forget, there are two dozen people running for congress that in some way, shape, or form support qanon. this doesn't go away if merely trump goes away. >> and trump has been an unbridled ki unbridled cheerleader, i think ask in the press briefing room by the a.p. about a individual qanon candidate and i wan to play that moment that frank talked about because he was asked in front of a large but not quite as large as joe biden's audience that night, a large television audience about qanon and here is what he said. >> you could just once and for all state that that is completely not true?

and disavow qanon in its entirety. >> i know nothing about qanon. >> i just told you. >> you tell me doesn't necessarily make it fact. i hate to say that. i know nothing about it. i do know that they are very much against pedophelia, they fight it very hard. but i know nothing about it. >> they believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep state. >> i tell you what i know about, i know about antifa and the radical left. >> i mean, it is the hallmark of a cult member to say you could present me the facts but how do i know that your facts are real facts and not just your facts. i mean, what is the white house's sort of answer for responses like that from the country commander-in-chief? >> i mean, there are people around the president who just want to put the blinders on and not act like that is not happening. and you can't because what the president also said, nichol, and you know to savannah in that

interview, was he dismissed the fbi director and also not dismissing qanon. his fbi director who said that the group like this are domestic terror threats. he's essentially saying he doesn't know about something that could be a potential terror threat and wouldn't denounce a group that has these conspiracy theory crazy views. and we've seen them do this before. and the only reason that people deduce from them or the president would do this is because he doesn't want to alienate people who support him, regardless of where they come from. that is what the critics will say. but he's been given multiple opportunities to denounce this group and he hasn't. and when he was asked about the candidate in georgia who won, he said he supported her and tweeted out she was a rising republican star. >> it is incredible. at this point "the new york times" poll today makes clear

joe biden's coalition includes diverse group of americans, a lot more suburban women than trump, suburban men increasingly and trump includes among them qanon supporters and white supremacists. amazing state of the race. thank you both. the next hour of "deadline: white house" starts offer a very short break. don't go anywhere. tarts offer ay short break. don't go anywhere. whoo. i'm gonna grow big and strong. yes, you are. i'm gonna get this place all clean. i'll give you a hand. and i'm gonna put lisa on crutches! wait, what? said she's gonna need crutches. she fell pretty hard. you might want to clean that up, girl. excuse us. when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you built with customizable coverage. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. -donny, no. -oh. -and i'm gonna -- -eh, eh, eh. we knew that this was really, really bad. we had ample forewarning. but we did almost no testing, almost no contact tracing. completely ignored the science,

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this is about the future. it is the challenges that we're going to face in the future. do we have a leader who knows how to build alliances, who knows how to build coalitions,

who could bring the country together to tackle these tough challenges. president trump has shown that he cannot do that. he can't go it domestically, he hasn't worked with the governors on everything from covid to the wildfires and he can't do it internationally. we've seen that both on covid and on most of the major national security issues. hi, again, everyone. it is 5:00 in the east. donald trump seems to think that the sole purpose of the republican party and the american presidency is to serve him. but a growing number of prominent conservatives are standing up and saying, they will not longer associate themselves with the party that exists to justify trump's whims, his cruelty, his authoritarian impulses and embrace of conspiracy theories. one of them is that man. in charge of the raid that took out osama bin laden.

he said he recently voted for joe biden and he writes this. quote, truth be told, i am a pro-life, prosecond amendment and national anthem standing conservative but i also believe that black lives matter an the dreamers deserve a path to citizenship that diversity and inclusion are essential to our national success, that education is a gret equalizer, that climate change is real and the first amendment is the cornerstone of our democracy. most important, i believe that america must lead in the world with courage, conviction, and a sense of honor and humility. admiral mccraven is far from the only conservative trying to cast off the shackles of trumpism. our friend and the former republican national committee chairman michael steel reveals in a new piece posted on nbc think today that he's voting for joe biden. he explains it this way. america has watched as a republican party stopped pursuing its animating

principles of freedom and opportunity. it has given up its voice on things that matters and instead bent the arc of the party toward the base of one man who is neither a republican nor a conservative. he said more about his decision during an appearance on morning joe today. >> this isn't leadership. this is a failed moment. and the country needs to do better than this. because the country can do better than this. and, you know, for all of my policy differences with joe biden, i told him, i said, i look forward to beating you oup on some of the stuff that you might put out there but i want to have that fight over health care and the environment and things like that, i don't want to have a fight over being an american. the person we put in that office, in the oval office, behind that resolute desk, is an extension of us. they reflect, the good, the bad,

the ups and downs of us an at the end of the day we come to rely on them to do the right thing. >> it is such a wow moment. but steel isn't even the first rnc chairman to announce his opposition to the party's current standard bearer. former montana governor during george w. bush said he too is voting for joe biden. that is where we start the hour with our favorite reporters and friends. robert gibbs is here, also joining us founding member of the lincoln project steve schmidt is here and i start with aisha mills do you want us. >> we want to reclaim our nation and absolutely we want you to be seeing people that donald trump is a threat and completely the wrong direction. and sometimes he think it is the

entire administration has lost its mind. and so, yes. and steve, kudos to the lincoln project, you are killing it on twitter. >> steve schmidt, i think your name has been invoked but i want to you take on a couple of these things here. a winning coalition that includes two former chairman of the republican party as well as, i think tim alberta breaks new ground in his reporting today and he's been all over the republican slide into the muck that is trumpism. and i think he's been pot on in his articulation of what is happening in the race. he writes that essentially suburban women have been gone since 2018 and it is suburban men, white college educated men who are pain having what we're seeing in the polls, the result of their departure is that look of sort of an enduring lead for joe biden, close to ten points. where do you think this race is and how does the republican piece of it fit into the

coalition you're seeing behind biden? >> well, rasmussen talked about the fact that right now the lead that joe biden is enjoying is made up in large measure by republicans. steve bannon talked about the fact that he called it the bannon line. if you have four or 5% of republicans who would cross over and support joe biden, it would be impossible for donald trump to win. so by no means are disaffected republicans the majority of joe biden's base. but are an important component of it. it is an american coalition and i think the hang over of everybody's surprise from 2016 is that the size, the durability, the depth of biden's coalition has just been constantly understated generally speaking in the media for this race. because no one wants to be wrong twice in an election with donald trump. but biden has an outsize lead.

as big of a lead in the modern politics this century in the race. and when you look at donald trump's comportment and you look at the rallies and what is going on and the totality of the stories, this a campaign in collapse. it is pulling down the tv buys and out of monday and squandered a billion dollars. donald trump's the first candidate in history to spend a billion dollars and make a situation worse. but the entire campaign is built on a premise that he's done a good job for the last four years and i think the american people have a good strong understanding of what a disaster we're in and we're in this disaster because of the incompetent who sits behind the resolute desk. >> there are two sides to this, though, robert gibbs. joe biden has run a disciplined campaign and managed to make a structure after disadvantage which is less attention from the press, a strategic and electoral advantage. and none of the 17 republicans

who ran against trump in '16 could figure out how to do that. hillary clinton did win the popular vote but could not eke out an electoral victory fur years ago. but what i want to ask you, is joe biden has managed to move his party's ticket to the left of where it was four years ago on some big issues, like climate change and that are important not just to democrats but to younger voters and keep racking in all of these -- the mccraven outfit is remarkable for what he lays bear. he's a second amendment loving standing for the anthem believing horde core conservative who is voting for joe biden because the country has no honor under donald trump. but joe biden deserves as much credit for doing the right things as trump deserves blame for running his campaign into the ground, doesn't he? >> absolutely. look, i think everyone has to give credit to one singular thing about joe biden has talked

about, the first thing he talked about in this race was bringing this country together and fundamentally that is what underpins both of those op-eds. and look, we've all been involved in the announcement speeches and sometimes you look back at them and you have some throw away lines and you say are threads that come throughout the whole campaign. but for joe biden it is really been the central premise, right. and i would say, sure, he's moved the party to the left on important things like climate change and when you see somebody like the admiral talking about he doesn't deny the climate is changing and therefore we have to change with it. so i think it is an important evolution in this campaign. and look, i think what also underpins a lot of this is utter exhaustion at donald trump. i think that first debate laid bear what post people are protected by. most people are smart enough they don't have twitter on their phones and spend their days glued to it. so they are removed from this rant that happens on a -- every

hour basis from the oval office. but what happened in that debate was 75 million people tuned in to watch donald trump read his twitter feed. and now you weren't protected from the fact that you didn't have that app on your phone. you were watching it in realtime. and add to that the incompetence of what they've seen around the economy and covid and it is been disastrous for this president. >> you know, steve, i want to ask you something and put you on the spot because we've never had this conversation privately. mark salter was on the show and we were talking about -- it just reminded me of some of the themes that john mccain sought to hit in his campaign in '08 that we were a part of it. it seems that obviously the policy platform is dramatically different. john mccain rans a republican and joe biden is running a a democrat standard bearer, but it seems that joe biden is running

no fence to any of us a better version of the campaign john mccain might have wanted to run and the reason i want your thoughts on that is because this coalition seems like a coalition that only a few figures on either side of the ideological spectrum who hope to assemble. >> look, i think, nicolle, at the end of the day the stakes in this election are the highest that they've been in any american election since 1864. they're much higher than they were in 2008. in 2008 through the fall, the mccain campaign was beset by the reality that the great recession had begun on a republican watch and the right track numbers in the country just tanked. and it was clear from mid-september on that president obama, that senator obama was going to win the election. i mean, but as bad as things were in the fall of 2008, there

were not hundreds of thousands of dead americans because of the incompetence of the american president. the most lethal lie in the history of the presidency, in the country's history was the lie that donald trump told this country over february or march. and it has shattered american life. and so joe biden, you know, right now is about to become president, i believe. but he's doing so in a landscape where the damage to the country, and not just in death and suffering and economic collapse, but to our spirit, to our soul, to our national character. it is so immense. and i think that joe biden has run a campaign that is appropriate for the moment. and i think he has the life skills, forged from his own tragedy and resiliency to begin the work of healing up the wounds of this nation. but we're a hurting country.

make to mistake about it. after four years. and we're hurting in a way that is unparalleled to any other moment in time in the modern history of the country. >> you know, aisha, it does bring about this reality that i think any of thaus worked on campaign have to contend with. at the end of the day, you could have the best data analytics and write the best speeches but people vote on a gut feeling and i think what steve is saying bears out in our guts we're scared. and it is leading people to do things they've never done before. two former chairman of the republican national committee, to not just vote for joe biden privately but to write about it and try to bring people with them. at least four members of the trump administration, anthony scaramucci, liz meth new mon and miles taylor and olivia troy not just leaving for cause but joining a superpac to try to communicate what a danger donald trump is on issues of domestic

terrorism, coronavirus response, and scaramucci's indictments tend to be more personal about character flaws. but it is also forcing newspapers and news outlets to break with tradition and today usa today broke 38 years of tradition and endorsed joe biden. i'm going to read a little bit of it. this year the board supports the election of joe biden who offers a shaken nation a harbor of calm and competence. if there were a choice to two opposing ideas we would not choose sides. different voters have different concerns but this is not a normal election and these are not normal times. this year, character, competence, and credibility are on the ballot. given trump's refusable to guarantee a peaceful of transfer of power if he loses, so too is the future of america's

democracy. aisha? >> yeah. i want to go back to sum that up and go back to something that has been said about who gets the credit for this. surely we're going to elect joe biden in november to get rid of this monster in the white house. but let's recognize that the power, this is really power to people. joe biden is being powered by movements that rose up in the wake of donald trump, starting with the women's march that happened just as he was being inaugurated and then certainly before that, the black lives matter movement that said we're not going to tolerate all of the bodies in the street. and even go back and look at occupy wall street for example. it is been elizabeth warren, it is been bernie sanders as leaders that have also really ignited movements but it is been the people on the ground, our republican friends included who have seen this country slip away from the dignity and respect that we want to portray in the

world, they have allowed some of our darkest angels to come back up into the mainstream that have said, no, no we're not going to do this any more. and if there is anything that we should take away from this cycle, it is that years past we often have just wanted it to be about one singular figure head, the president is just the person who is driving the train. but this is such a powerful moment. because people from all walks of life who care about a variety of different issues, be it immigration reform or criminal justice or dignity or reputation around the world and environment, et cetera, et cetera, they are rallying, rallying right now to participate because the politics are personal, and certainly the consequences are real and being felt in people's lives. and i think that that is who we need to kind of keep our eye on the prize and frankly if we have that tone and tenure of inclusivity and recognizing that people are in fact participating in a way that is driving the change that we want to see, then we could continue to get more

people engaged and involved. i just want to put that plug out there to remind us to pat ourselves on the back for engaging and participating because it is going to be all of the people that change this country come november. >> well, and robert gibbs, let's put an if even finer point on it. she's absolutely right and it was black voters in south carolina that had the most to say and to do with joe biden becoming the democratic party standard bearer. and then on super tuesday when he started winning big victories in states he hadn't campaigned to once and hadn't run an ad in ever because he didn't have any money, it was just as she was saying, a coalition of grassroots support and a groundswell that started in south carolina and really swept from coast to coast. >> absolutely. look, i think going into south carolina, even as much trouble as joe biden has had, he was one of really only two candidates that had shown any sort of ability to put together a

multi-racial coalition. right. and that happens in a big way in south carolina. it propelled him well past that. and again, i just give a lot of credit to the campaign and to the candidate for having that sort of message discipline. but also having that, not just the message discipline that we talk about as practitioners, but the theory of the case of what is will take to win this white house is really, that is the hardest thing that i think to pull through. that is the thing that is not as easy. you have campaigns that will switch slogans like the soup of the day. and that doesn't really work. you have to have something that is a real theory of the case that is really at the core and the gut of who that candidate is and is passionate about talking about every day and i think that is why joe biden has been successful, this idea of unification, this idea of, you know, a president not just for a party but for a country, and i

think those are all powerful ideas that he's brought to the fore. >> no, it is a great point. he ran, he said he was running to save the soul of the country. and then donald trump did everything he could to stick a spear through the soul of the country. so all right. as a punishment for being brilliant. robert and aisha are sticking around long lines voting in the key battleground state of wisconsin. the early voting numbers are staggering across this country. we'll get new data from our friend steve kornacki at the big board about who is voting early and how it is already shaping the contours of this election. and later donald trump said we're rounding the corner on coronavirus. if only. cases are actually soaring. in nearly every state. our colleague dr. kavita patel will join us and she said tracking the spread of trump disinformation is nearly as challenging as tracking the virus itself. "deadline: white house" returns

after a quick break so don't go anywhere. so don't go anywhere and senate republicans want to overturn laws requiring insurance companies to cover people with pre-existing conditions. they're rushing a lifetime appointment to the supreme court to change the law through the courts. 70% of americans want to keep protections for pre-existing conditions in place. tell our leaders in washingtn to stop playing games with our healthcare.

with just two weeks to go before election day, in person early voting is shattering records across this country. today on the first day of early voting in the key battleground state of wisconsin, voters endured long lines to cast ballots at milwaukee busy site. the wait according to shaq brew fer nearly an hour long. 15,000 votes have been cast by mail or drop box. they stress they are prepared for the record turnout. the state of texas leading the

country in early voting. 4 million have cast their ballots, far more than any other state. the number of early votes cast in texas will soon surpass the total number of votes donald trump won in that state in 2016. for more on what any of that means, on early voting and the impact it is having on the race we turn to correspondent steve kornacki at the big board for us. robert gibbs and steve shsubmit and aisha are here as well. what do we make of it. someone like who we worked on the kalecampaign, what do you m of the numbers. >> it is a great question. it speaks to the pandemic. i think it speaks to democratic enthusiasm. 30 million and counting votes cast nationally. this is more than one fifth of all of the votes that were cast in the entire 2016 election. they have already been cast here on october 20th, the pace compared to this day in 2016,

288% more votes cast right now and you mentioned some of the states here. texas, they're at almost half of their total turnout from 2016. again, on october 20th. some of the other heavy hitter states when it comes to early voting, the million dollar question is does this por tend anything for election day. and this is stark but probably not a big surprise, when you think of how politicized the debate over early voting and mail-in voting has become. here is pennsylvania for example. new to the mail-in voting game, democrats 887,000 votes returned and democrats returning for the return in pennsylvania speaking to democratic enthusiasm and the partisan divide over how people vote. but it raises the question here, in pennsylvania and elsewhere, if democrats are very successful at getting their folks out to vote early, getting mail-in

ballots out to -- sent in early, it puts the pressure on republicans for election day to counter that. to have a huge flood of a turnout on election day. we saw that on a smaller scale in 2016. states whereby margin of six to ten points clinton was winning and trump swamped her on election day. in pennsylvania, this is something republicans would poin to if democrats would point to the early voting, republicans would say, hey, in the last few months we've registered more new voters than democrats have. and that really becomes the trump case. the republican case is there are voters out there we have identified and you're not seeing them in the polls but we'll see them, they'll say, on election day. so it just becomes a situation, a lot of the states, where democrats may run up sort of big numbers here over the next couple days and weeks in some of the states and then the question

is can the republicans erase the gap with a huge flood of turnout on election day. >> what is the forest look like? we start to stare at trees, those of us who are super focused on the states that went in a way that a lot of people didn't think they would go in 2016. but what is the broader picture look like to you with all of your expertise on national and statewide polling models? >> let's take a look. this is how things finished in -- i'm trying to get the 2016 map up here. let me see if i could get the 2016 map. this is supposed to smoothly go to the 2016 total. okay. i can't get it up so i'm going to circle three states here. pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin. okay. so donald trump in 2016 got 306 electoral votes. pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin are the three states that hadn't gone republican in three decades and that he

flipped. the margin for trump in each one of the three states was less than one point. you talked barely 10,000 votes for trump in michigan. when you look at swing state polling right now, we to talk about trump trailing in north carolina and arizona, the swing states right now where trump faced the biggest deficit is wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. pennsylvania is a little dicier. but i think the biggest margins consistently are these three states. if trump loses pennsylvania, it knocks him town to 286. if he loses michigan, it knocks him down to 270. that is 16 electorate votes and puts him right on the line and if he loses wisconsin he falls under the line and hits 260. so the three states that he barely won in 2016 where the polling is not encouraging for him lately, if he doesn't turn it around in those three states an find a way to win at least one of them, he falls under 270 and at that point he could win

every other state that he took in 2016 and it wouldn't be enough. he would start having to flip states that clinton won in 2016. so the most path for joe biden when you look at all of the different combinations and scenarios, it is win the three states that have been democratic for three decades that trump won by less than a point, just flip those three states if you're joe biden, you don't need anything else likely. >> steve, it is robert gibbs. how are you? >> good. >> i love the tables have been turned. i get to ask you a question. finally. we're talking about these big turnout numbers an all of this democrats we fantasize about blue states in the south and particularly the biggest one in texas. you mentioned this turnout now is almost at half of what we were just four years ago. how much do you think that -- how big is that z that turnout have to get to see a tipping

point in a place that we know has been moving more blue but hasn't quite gotten over the hump? >> texas, let's see if we could call up the results from 2016. remind folks what happened. this is texas in 2016. the margin here for trump over clinton was nine points. that is already down and it was double-digits four years earlier when mitt romney ran against obama and so that was down for republicans with trump still winning by nine and then ahead to 2018 as the ted cruz beto o'rourke senate race and cruz won but his margin was just three. so you've gone in a couple of election cycles from losing by double-digits to losing by nine with hillary clinton and to losing by three in the senate race in 2018. and the question in texas, the growth for democrats is all of these metro areas in texas, it is around houston, it is around dallas, san antonio, all of these metro areas in texas, there acounties this wr

republicans could counts on winning by 20 points that joe biden has a plausible chance of pulling out. so the growth potential is there for democrats but the question is, is it countered by what the republicans are talking about and what trump is talking about which is running up these huge sort of margins among noncollege white rural voters. could they squeeze more out of that and eke out texas by a couple of points as cruz did in 2018. >> this is the time of year when i start quoting steve kornacki at the dinner table. but steve kornacki, thank you for spending time with us. robert gibbs, you are hired. they are sticking around. when we come back, one last question for our panel. could it be that we're over thinking the whole thing. back with that after a quick beak. ♪ upbeat music

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it could feel a little bit like falling down the rant hole, watching the polls, reading the cross tabs but when it comes down to the election, we have to ask are we over thinking it. we have some context in politico today. sometimes you hear a voter hear something to basic that you're inclined to dismiss it until you hear it for the thousandth time. that's the story of this

election across america about choices this november. i've been hearing the same thing over and over again. i don't like trump. sometimes there is a slight variation. i'm so tired of this guy, i can't handle another four years of this. many of the conversations never turn to biden. in phoenix several people who have just voted did not so much as mention his name in explaining their preference for the president. we're back with robert gibbs, steve schmidt and aisha mills. this is politics 101. if it is a referendum on thein koum bent, the incumbent loses. trump may be too much of a narcissist to be the news cycle about anybody but him. he may be structurally incapable of being re-elected. >> in 2016, whom ever the election was about was the

person losing the election. and for 99% of the election it was about trump. and then james comey made it about hillary clinton in the last week by just enough that by 78,000 votes in three states, donald trump pulls out this inside straight. but he's the president now. and everything that has happened over these last four years, he's responsible for. it is on his watch. and people understand, at least the majority do, that he's wrecked the country and that's profoundingly incompetent and indecent and divided the country. he's the leader of a faction that is at war with the majority of the country. he stoked a cold civil war. and joe biden offers decency, he offers competence and that is why he's going to win. of course the election is about trump. because the tragedy that we're dealing with in this country was caused singularly by trump's malfeasance and

none of this had to be. but it is. because four years ago there was a real lack of imagination in the american mind about the capacity of this guy, to cause a profound tragedy. and that is exactly what he did. and he's going down because of it. >> aisha, each people close to trump have a nickname for him. they call him the sun king because if anything shades his sort of path to the spotlight, he becomes enraged. it would seem this is another example of sort of that structural advantage that joe biden managed to find for himself in not being the political headline every hour of every news cycle. >> sure. the best thing that is happened for biden for sure is that donald trump just can't keep his mouth closed. that he's so obsessed with the spotlight, with people listening to him. no matter what he's saying.

even if he's the butt of the joke, really, the fact that people are even talking about him, is the thing that gets him going. and then of course he can't hold his tongue or put together a coherent thought without popping off on twitter. so, yes, the best thing that happened for joe biden in this campaign is is that he has gotten to do what he does best. which is connect with people, show his -- show case his character and be in deep kofgs with folks behind the scenes. what i don't want us to lose sight of as we get rid of donald trump, we can't go back to business as usual. it is so unusual and bizarre the last three and a half years that people have forgotten and anything that is quiet and when the leader is not on twitter will be good. but so much of what is really the wind beneath biden's wings is this desire to have a different type of america. not just go backwards to

yester-year, to 20 years ago but to have a progressive imagination about who we could be and that is the thing that i'm hopeful through the election and get rid of the crazy guy, all of the people who are talking to that are saying i'm voting because i just can't stand trump, that we'll also be continuing to be excited about the idea that now that we've got a guy that we could work with in the white house, we're going to continue to change the country for better as opposed to just still and go backwards wex to hold on to that progressive spirts. >> it is an interesting point and i think hope springs eternal that some parts of our party politics spring back but i think it is an open question of whether the damage and the gaslighting and the enabling of white supremacists to be part of the political conversation and qanon, if that doesn't continue to sort of taint and contaminate our politics, what are you looking for? >> well, look, i think the

question that i used to get most often right after the trump campaign and probably that first two years, was would things ever possibly go back to normal, right? could we return or have we crossed over to something different and i think that is a great test for the next president. a great test for joe biden if he's elected. because i'm not entirely sure that you can tape and glue everything that has been broken back together. i know this. >> yeah, me neither. >> and people that think that -- and this is true with obama, people that wanted change, it takes time and it doesn't happen with one person. if people want to see a different country, they'll have to continue to be engaged in moving that group and moving all of us to that better place. it isn't going to be done by

just one person. even the top of the government. >> no, look, i think that is, should he win some of the expectation, it is like going in after a natural disaster, the biden harris team would have to go in and really understand the damage done to our intelligence agencies and our pentagon and our national security, our state department. a lot of them are hollowed out. it was a pleasure to have all three of you along. thank you for spending so much time for us today. i'm grateful. when we come back. dire warnings from the front lines as health officials report soaring rates of coronavirus in states all across the country. "deadline: white house" continues with that story after a quick break. stay with us.

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we have many patients who have come in here and the last words before we put a breathing tube in are they didn't realize it was as bad as it was. they thought they were doing what they could do to protect them self. and would you like to see my grandchildren -- this is larger than them. by wearing a mark you're protecting them as well as yourself. please, if you do nothing else, please start wearing masks. tank you.

>> a plea from our front line health care workers for all of us two protect ourselves and others with proper face coverings. wear a mask, he said. during this obvious now third peak of the coronavirus in our country, and more than 65,000 new cases added just. por than 8. million americans have been infected and more than 221,000 people have been lost to the virus in the united states of america. over the last two weeks 43 states and washington, d.c. has vine a percentage increase in cases. biggest spike is happening in new mexico. where cases have increased a whopping 126%. and experts fear an upcoming spike in hospitalization and staff shortages there. joining us, former director of health policy for the obama white house, dr. kavita patel. i sometimes want to squeeze information out of you and the other scientists and doctors to

help inform my own decisions about whether to see my parents. but just listening to the front line health care worker feel moved to tears that he's making the sacrifice, he has access to testing but not seeing his grandchildren. it really underscores how uneven this sacrifice is. the people that don't believe in social distancing or mask wearing are not making the sacrifices and it is costing lives. >> yeah, nicolle. you're touching on kind of something that is so universal for many of us. not just in health care but so many americans to your point that are struggling with decisions an it is so hard when you see kind of the president, patient zero for misinformation himself, who is making this kind of masks being political or not being necessary commentary. so it is troubling. and just as a kind of a point of context, the numbers of cases that we're seeing are reminiscent of what we saw around july 4th.

where you recall we were looking at 60 to 80,000 cases a day and they're also unfortunately reminiscent of the trends we saw in march and april when we had the horrible experience and had to do that national lockdown. we do not need to do that if we could all follow those simple, basic rules that you've heard now from so many of us and you saw in a very impassioned way. but it should be reinforced. we're going into thanksgiving, into the holiday season. we're all tired and we're tempted and we want to touch our loved ones. but we feed to protect them and ourselves. >> you know, and i know you've got a piece out on the disinformation. but it seems that we can't even get back to ground level. it seems that donald trump has brought this whole thing so low, so underground, he literally attacked joe biden for saying he would listen to dr. fauci. that is a political attack against joe biden 14 days before an election. and tony fauci has been tossed

around like chum in the water for the last 48 hours by donald trump. i mean, where -- how do we even get back to sort of ground level before we could start really trying to to eradicate this vir and get our cases where tony fauci says they should be, around 10,000 a day? >> i think the best way to get back to ground level to your point is to actually put into place some sort of national clear strategy. i mean, just let's imagine the counter factual, nicole. we've seen the misinformation and damage and lies can do. imagine the clear messaging, this is what we need to do. you don't have to say it's a national mask mandate. say, we're going to make masks available everywhere. they will be free. what the u.s. postal service is going to do, we'll put them in the mail. don't think about it. if you need one, it's there for you. we want to make it as easy as possible for you to make these

things easy. we'll support schools for protocols and we'll support small businesses to survive and that you can look forward to seeing them again. that's the way we do this. that's the way we bring it back to some sense of normalcy and that's possible. that's within reach, nicole. this isn't hypothetical. we could have done that months ago. so now you replace that messaging with these dire requests. all of us in almost tears and hope that it has influence, but it is possible and i look forward to that day where the message is clear and the actions are consistent from the leadership to the front lines. >> such an amazing, amazing state of our country's conversation. doctor, thank you for spending some time with us on it. when we return, as we do every day, remembering lives well lived. remembering lives well lived. apps are used everywhere...

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you could call it a life motto. michelle horn and her husband ian used to tell each other that they could handle anything between the kisses they would say. the first one of the day and the last, so when michelle went into the hospital with a covid-19 diagnosis, there was no other choice. they were going to fight. michelle spent 30 days in a hospital bed, part of that time on a ventilator but slowly and with great effort and with a whole lot of love, she improved. she started to recover, and at

the end of last month, michelle was able to go home and start on physical therapy. now, that should be the end of the story for two good people, it should have been their happy ending. but two fridays ago after they watched a movie together, ian and michelle started to get ready for bed. they kissed good night, the last kiss of the day and michelle sat up to take her medicine. ian told the cbs station in wichita he heard one big breath and he knew something was wrong. minutes later they were in the back of an ambulance and a short time after that, michelle was gone. ian remembers her like this, she was kindness. she was compassion, and she was empathy. she was my super power. and the last line of her obituary, until i can kiss you again, your husband ian. ian, it is you we're thinking about this afternoon and your

marvelous michelle. we will be right back. r marvels oumichelle we will be right back. ok, just keep coloring there... and sweetie can you just be... gentle with the pens. okey. okey. i know. gentle..gentle new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database so you can start hiring right away. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home.

wewith some healthy halloween treats today. these are called veggie fruit chews. mine tasted like poopoo! mine tastes like broccoli, yuck! i want candy!

thank you so much for letting us into your homes during these truly extraordinary times. we're really, really grateful you did. "the beat" with my friend ari melber starts now. hi, nicole. thank you very much. i'm ari melber. thanks for joining us. two weeks away from election day making this a campaign like no other. donald trump in pennsylvania today where he's roughly deadlocked with joe biden in several polls and if this race did track past precedent, today would be like three days out than 14. based on just how many people are already voting right now. and that matters because it means many voters are not looking for more information, more rallies and ads, they are just voting. it may be bad news for donald trump if he hopes this make this week's debate the turning point he s.