republicans. that's the money you can get the cheaper unit wlhen you're buyin ads on these tv stations. so they're pulling more with soft money, but democrats clearly have an early advantage heading in -- and a late advantage at this point as we're five weeks away. kasie. five weeks? two weeks. what am i saying? >> two weeks. i know, it feels like much longer than that. thank you so much, my friend. it you can sign up for the newsletter at signup.axios.com. my question this morning, are republicans who think the future of their party is something other than the trump family? what are you going to say in response to the president's always to investigate joe biden? it's a very important question and i think the answers are going to be very revealing. thanks for getting up way too early with us on this wednesday morning. stick around, because "morning joe" starts right now. attorney general barr, has the president or anyone at the white house ever asked or suggested that you open an investigation of anyone?

>> i wouldn't -- i wouldn't -- >> yes, no. >> could you repeat that question? >> we've got to get the attorney general to act. >> the president or anybody else. >> seems you'd remember something like that and be able to tell us. >> yeah, but i'm trying to grapple with the word suggest. >> he's got to act fast. he's got to appoint somebody. >> they've not asked me to open an investigation, but -- >> perhaps they've suggested? >> this is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election. >> i don't know. i wouldn't say suggest. >> hinted? >> i don't know. >> inferred? you don't know. okay. >> this has to be done early so the attorney general has to act. >> senator harris now the democratic vice-presidential nominee finally gets an answer to a question she asked the attorney general more than a year ago. >> you know --

>> better late than never. >> you know, willie, i'm surrounded, most of the people that i see every day are voting for donald trump. most of the friends i grew up with are voting for donald trump. and it's good talking to them and just saying, so why are you voting for this man? well, he's a terrible guy, he's a horrible example for my kids, i'd never invite him over to the house, he's despicable. i hate him. i just hate him, but and then fill in the blank, aoc, or nancy pelosi or bernie sanders or regulations or tax cuts or 401(k)s. and i say, so, well, we have right now a president of the united states who is demanding that his attorney general arrest

the vice president -- former vice president of the united states, his chief political competitor. this is something that happens or happened in the former soviet union. this is something that happens still in russia. this is not what soft hotel ataurean looks like, this is what full blown awe tockcracy looks like, at least if you focus on the actions of the president of the united states. and you're telling me you're more concerned about nancy pelosi as -- outside of the white house than you are an autocrat inside of the white house? it's really -- there's -- the justifications from, again, my friends are extraordinary. but, this is just one of a hundred examples that we can

cite that shows just this massive disconnect between what actions that the president's taking that are unamerican and the justification for voting for this man who is trying to arrest his political rivals open the e -- on the eaves ve of what he believes is a defeat. >> there are so many outrageous claims and so mr. outrageous statements from the president that it's hard to stop sometimes and look one in the eye before the next one comes. but as you say right now, the president of the united states less than two weeks of the election is calling for the attorney general of the united states to launch an investigation that i think somehow thinks will be resolved before election day in some way or at least just to muddy the waters before election day. and he goes farther than that in his rallies calling for joe bidentor lockbiden to be locked

you get the sense he would throw joe biden in prison and be done with it. but this is a man who is desperate. this is a man look at the polls and calling for joe biden to be locked up, attacking a 60 minutes interviewer, attacking debate moderators, anything can he do to change the conversation from coronavirus, which is what will decide this election, perhaps, to his peril. >> right. >> but i'm just wondering, mika, so if somebody says, well, you know, donald trump will probably be better for my 401(k) than biden, even though moody's and others on wall street suggest that's not the case because we'll have stability in the white house, we'll have stability in the markets, we'll have stability in trade and negotiations, we'll have stability across the globe. but even if they make that argument, so, you know, the f r

401(k) went down maybe 20%. are they saying that a man that's trying to arrest his political opponent in america two weeks before an election, are they saying that maybe they'd lose 25 percent of their 401(k) under biden but 20% under trump and that 5% is worth throwing away american democracy on a guy who claims to have unlimited powers because of article two? a guy that questions the federal judiciary's independence and a guy who is trying the best he can to have his political opponent arrested two weeks before a free election. and let me remind you all, my friends and loved ones, in the united states of america. not in belarus, not in hungary, not in russia, in the united states of america. what is worth that? you know, i've heard also, mika, this other excuse. the press is liberal.

so, okay, so you're voting for a guy who's trying to arrest his political opponent because you don't like what don lem mon say on cnn? you want to appoint a man who says he has unlimited powers and can do whatever he wants to do and calls for the arrests of journalists who question him like jeff mason and also, well, like me repeatedly? you're going to vote for him because lawrence o'donnell makes you mad? because you don't like "new york times"? it's, again, it really -- there is no logic to it. this is you desperately trying to justify something that you know can't really rationally be justified. i haven't even gotten to the racism, to the muslim registry, to the president call hispanics

breeders. i haven't even gotten to that. haven't even gotten to charlottesville, to the president telling white supremacists to, quote, stand by. to the president talking about assassinating his political rivals with second amendment solutions to stop them from appointing judges to the supreme court. haven't even gotten through four or five years of violent rhetoric. i haven't even talked about the president of the united states saying that he would not guarantee, repeatedly in debates, the peaceful transfer of power. he did eventually after the fifth or sixth time. >> not really. >> but, yeah. it's always sort of, oh, yeah, sure, sure, i'll guarantee that but what about antifa? what about this? what about that? so i haven't even talked about all of those things. and you add it up, this is a man and you know this, would be an autocrat if he could. would be a dictator if he could.

you know that. you've said that to me. many of you have said you know that if he loses he can't leave america because our government would be afraid that he would sell state secrets. our most classified secrets to other countries. some of you tell me you think he's going to end up in jail. but you're going to vote for him anyway. you know, i'm tom hanks in "big ". i don't get it. i don't get it. you're my best friends, you're my family members, and you're going to believe garbage that you read on facebook. >> they don't even care that -- >> you still -- >> he accused you of murder and tried to get you investigated.

>> you still are telling me, even though i've told you repeatedly it's a lie and sent you evidence, you're still saying you may not take a vaccine next year because anthony fauci has a financial stake in it. that's just a lie. and i love you, but you have to be really, really stupid or willfully ignorant if you still believe that lie. because it's not the truth. you just send facebook posts to each other that exacerbate these lies. >> facebook. >> it's really -- it's something. but, mika -- >> this is what madeline all bright warned about. someone like president trump can turn this country into a

different place. >> this is a challenge for democracy. again, i'm not talking about people over there. >> no. >> i'm talking about friends and loved ones, again, who -- >> who we got to -- >> would give their lives for me, for my family and yet they're -- it's something, again, i'm reminded -- you know willie and i often on friday nights when, you know, you're out with your bowling league, mika, willie and i often get together and you and christina are bowling and we'll sit and we'll watch a river run through it and we'll weep at the end when tom says that sometimes we have to completely love those we don't completely understand. and that's what i work on every day now. especially for the next two weeks. >> okay. >> willie, what part of "rougher

r "river run through" tell them the part you like the most. >> when brad pitt falls asleep by the river, every time that gets me. >> every time. >> along with joe, willie and me, we have white house reporter for "the associated press," jonathan lemire. nbc news capitol hill correspondent kasie hunt back with us. she never sleeps. >> hold on a second. jonathan lemire, of course we don't let you go to our river runs through it viewing parties. >> you know what happened the last time you tried to -- >> i know. seriously, seriously, we don't want to get into that. >> okay. let's not. >> no. shh. shh. but, lemire, the red sox had a great game last night. mookie was looking amazing. joe kelly closed down the rays. as one of boston's best games since 2018. >> first all of, i have an air tight nondisclosure agreement

about the time i gried with ytr you and willie, so let's move away from that. yes, mookie betts proved he is one of the most electrifying and best players in basketball. the cornerstone of a franchise, one that a team should lock up for a decade or more would seem to be the right strategy. that did not happen for the boston red sox and mookie betts is showing off his incredible talents for the los angeles dodgers instead. last night he ran the bases like a demon. he hit a home run and made another great play in the field. he did it with infectious enthusiasm. he is, perhaps, the most popular and one of the top two or three best players in baseball. and good for the dodgers and why can't we get players like that? >> well, you know, the thing is, though, in all fairness, willie, there's no way the red sox could have seen this young kid's talents coming. who could -- how could they have

predicted that mookie would be this good, willie? >> it's almost like giving away your derek jeter, the cornerstone franchise, the guy that the kids could live up to. not something most franchises would do. it is fun for me to listen to red sox turn into yankee fans. you're two years removed from a world series and moaning about the fact that you haven't won one in so long. welcome to our life, it's been 20 years. >> all right. enough of this conversation. now kacsie is talking about sta trek. now -- >> it is -- >> whatever. >> again. don't ever confuse the two again. >> they're the same. >> no, they're not the same. >> oh, no. >> no. >> they're weird. >> oh, my god. >> okay. >> not the same. >> president trump held a rally in erie, pennsylvania, yesterday during which he kept joking that he wished it didn't have to be in erie, pennsylvania.

>> holy cow. >> we win pennsylvania we win the whole thing. before the plague came in i had it made. i wasn't coming to erie. i mean, i have to be honest. there's no way i was coming. i didn't have to. i would have called you and said hey, erie, if you have a chance get out and vote. we had this thing won. >> that's interesting. >> so he doesn't want to be there. >> thank you, cleveland, we don't want to be here. jonathan lemire, the president has been oan edge over the last couple days. one of the angriest performances on a tarmac than yesterday he storms off the set with leslie stahl, tearing off his mic, attacking leslie stahl. goes to erie and says thank you, erie, i don't want to be here. his wife stays back -- stays back at the white house, doesn't come supposedly a nagging cough. what's going on in the land of donald j. trump? >> president trump didn't want to be in erie last night,

apparently. but did i. i was there with him for that rally which was shorter than most. he's been clocked at under an hour and it was pretty chilly last night. but you're right. the president here last night did deliver what is supposed to be his closing argument with two weeks to go to the election. he said that the choice is between the trump economic recovery or if you elect joe biden and his socialist policies and tax cuts and so on, it will slow down the recovery. he even put it as adepression d that's what his advisers have wanted him to say for weeks. unfortunately for them he tends to step on it with the side shows. yes, we had a few more of them yesterday. a day after his attacks with dr. fauci, he stormed out of the 60 minutes interviewer and atracked leslie stahl on twitter. threatened to release a videotape, whatever that means of the interview. perhaps the white house has made its own recording, that is not certain. we have pressed as to what that means. but it does reflect his private mood, joe. as you say, on monday on the

tarmac out west he angrily lanced into reporters. aides say he's growing anxiously concerned that this is running away from him. he's running out of time. of course declares he is still going to win. we've seen some public comments that he's acknowledge ed could lose. he muses that how colose to joe biden who privately he feels is someone who is shot and has tlot. it would be an embarrassment if he lost to him. the other day he thought he might have to leave the country if he did. and he is seen here, he was in pennsylvania last night, the state that matters perhaps most of all in the electoral college map. he's going to be there a lot in the next two. but there's a frustration that the trajectory of the race is unchanged. it is about the pandemic and his response and these side shows that he's trying 10 to engage i day after day aren't working. >> and pandemic relief,

apparently mitch mcconnell might have a different point of view about when people should get it. the president loves to put checks in people's hands, almost so transactional it hurts. but where does pandemic relief stand for people who have been waiting for some sort of help? >> the reality is if he wanted to put checks with people's names on them before the election he have you had done it a couple weeks ago instead of sending a tweet that blew up all of the negotiations contrary to his own plool intereson politic ahead of the election. it's just not clear that we're going to get anything before election day here. i mean, the dynamics are complicated, mnuchin, the administration, and nancy pelosi seem to want to get something done. they say that they're still at the table. but for mitch mcconnell, the politics of it are complicated and he let it be known yesterday that he told his members in a private meeting that he doesn't -- he's telling the white house don't do it before

election day. and, you know, joe knows this well, the politics can change on a dime if -- if this really is the kind of landslide election that some of the polls suggest it could be, not just for the white house, but also across the senate map. which, you know, if you look and dig into those numbers, it looks like it's worse for senate republicans than potentially for the president. that's going to change things in congress. and, you know, mitch mcconnell running specially an opposition party means, i think it could mean that it's less likely people get the help that they -- that they need. and i think there's some real questions, you know, for americans, for their families, but our economy more broadly. the federal reserve a lot of people have raised concerns about the lack of action from congress and the implications that that can have. so, you know, a lot of dire -- of dire consequences here. but, you know, the erie moment, it just made me think back to --

i mean, first of all, what political candidate goes somewhere and then says i don't want to be here? you go to ask for people's votes and say dint want to have to come ask for your vote? it's mind boggling. and i also keep thinking back to the image because we were talking about "star wars" of the death star. remember brad parscale called the trump campaign the death star. it does blow up at the end of the move scli is ie. when you've got a presidential candidate going and saying i don't want to be here, it seems that's what's happening to this campaign in the final few weeks. >> definitely important to watch the movie until the end before you post your gif to the death star to see what happens there. this ties in back to your initial comments on the show this morning about the economy where you have donald trump saying that joe biden, if he is elected, will turn america into a socialist hell hole or however he puts it. the problem is it's joe biden and not bernie sanders and a lot of voters are not buying that argument. as you pointed out, their big

economic firms, financial firms like goldman sachs saying actually if joe biden's elected, if there's a blue wave and they take over the senate, that's better for the economy than donald trump being re-elected because we'll get sim foou stimulus. corporate taxes will go up, but there will be stimulus in the economy. so when he goes out there and trying to paint a picture of joe biden famously moderate in the last 50 years, it's been some socialist in the mold of bernie sanders or aoc. voters have said again and again that they just don't buy that caricature of joe biden. >> and, by the way, if mika had interjected when kasie was talking about the death star and said captain kirk blew it up, i would have walked off the set. [ laughter ] >> but jonathan is correct, though. if you look at all of the numbers and all of the cross-tabs in every single poll, the only issue where donald trump is competitive and in most of the polls he's ahead is the economy.

who can handle the economy better, donald trump or joe biden? if donald trump had stayed on message this entire year, which i know is impossible to do. but let's just say if a candidate in donald trump's position had stayed on message and talked about two things, one, the economy, how well it went before the coronavirus, how he's going to build it back again and then in places where the message sells, like state of florida fighting against socialism, which works, obviously, very well with cuban americans, eimmigrants from nicaragua, immigrants from -- >> venezuela. >> other places, yeah, venezuela, that that actually would have given him a better shot of being much closer in the polls right now. again, he could still win, but i think his campaign aides, they've been saying it for a year now. they were the first to say this

that if donald trump stuck with this message, he'd be doing far better than he is right now. but, again, let's see what happens tomorrow night in the debate. >> right. >> is he going to be able to stay on message? you think he's going to be kind lett kindler and gentler? he doesn't have that gear. he's a one-trick pony and it's to attack constantly and it's to move to everything but the economy. >> the debate should be fascinating. we'll be up covering it. so we'll get to new battleground state polling in just a moment, but first some other headlines. melania trump's return to the campaign trail was put on hold yesterday after a lingering cough after her bout with covid-19. according to her chief of staff, the first lady decided not to tag along with the president for his rally in pennsylvania last night out of an abundance of caution. >> well that's the safe thing to do. >> neither of them wanted to be in erie. >> well, if she was sick, obviously, so. >> that's true. the event would have marked her

first public appearance since contracting covid-19 earlier this month as well as her first time out on the campaign trail in more than a year. former president barack obama will be in pennsylvania today campaigning for joe biden. he'll be speaking at a drive-in rally in philadelphia this evening. his first in-person campaign event for biden this year. ahead of tonight's event, the former president also released a new video message on twitter late last night urging young americans to get out the vote this november. >> in times as polarized as these, your vote doesn't just matter, it matters more than ever before. and to change the game on any of the issues we care about, joe biden needs your vote. >> and the department of justice along with 11 states filed an antitrust lawsuit against google yesterday kicking off a legal battle that is likely to last for years. the lawsuit accuses the tech

giant of using its size to illegally monopolize the market for search-generated advertising through contracts that keep competitors out. in response, the company called the lawsuit deeply flawed saying in part people use google because they want to, not because they are forced to. the lawsuit marked the biggest move by the justice department against a big tech company since 1994 when the government sued microsoft for similar business practices. and still ahead on "morning joe," we know joe biden doesn't have any financial ties to china because he's released his tax returns. donald trump hasn't released his tax returns, but thanks to the "new york times," we're learning about a previously unreported bank account in china. we'll get to that story. plus, the senate is scheduled to hold amy coney barrett's confirmation vote next week. "politico's" jake sherman joins us way look at new polling about the supreme court. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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♪ we've got some battle ground state polling. in michigan, the latest poll pits joe bid puts joe biden up by seven points, 51 to 44%. in north carolina, they're tied. joe biden at 49%, trump at 46. in the state of florida, joe biden at 48%, donald trump at 47%. and in georgia, the latest "new york times" siena college poll shows the two presidential candidates tied exactly at 45% apiece. joining us now senior writer at "politico," coauthor of the

playbook jake sherman. he's an msnbc contributor. good to have you with us. joe, let me start with you going back to some of those polls. this is what you've been saying from the beginning when some of those outlier polls showed joe biden up seven, eight, nine points in a place like florida. this probably is more what this race looks like right now. >>. >> yeah, the florida race has been within a point or two actually for a month. you talk to the people that are looking at data every day that can tell you right now the exact number of people who have voted early that have been obsessing over these numbers on the democratic and republican side. they've always told me this race is within one point, it will probably be like desantis's race, it will probably be like bill nelson's race this past ye year or in 2018 where it's won by 20,000, 30,000, 40,000 votes,

maybe 100,000 or less. which is incredible in a state of 18 million. this race in florida is so tight that any poll that says it's three or four points is not reflecting what -- what the professionals are saying. you know what's interesting, though, is as you look at this map, jake sherman, we were all talking about upper midwest after 2016. everybody was talking about the angry white man, the disaffected white man, older white man in the midwest in wisconsin, michigan, and pennsylvania that had enough, said. hell with it and that's where the battleground was going to be. actually what we've seen are actually joe biden enjoying the better leads, more comfortable leads across the upper midwest and the real battle for the presidency is taking place right now in the sunbelt states from north carolina where it's tied to georgia where it's tied, florida tied, arizona very close. maybe biden up one or two.

so, if donald trump can squeak out a win in pennsylvania, which right now they think is their only hope up there, then biden needs to be shut now the those other sunbelt states or he wins. right now if it goes one point, two points either way, that's a dramatic shift of the entire election. >> and there's several states in that sunbelt, joe, that if joe biden wins the race is unwinnable for donald trump. a state like texas, by the way, where at least on the congressional level there's a lot of optimism that democrats are making massive gains in the big cities like houston, outside the big cities like houston. it's an amazing statistic which you will appreciate more than anybody. the an kry there's a district that's going for joe biden and

it looks to be a congressional district on the map too. so that sugar land is a cradle of democratic politics at the moment, which is stunning for anybody who's followed politics in the last 25 years. >> jonathan lemire, what do you see in those numbers? >> we're seeing what the trump path is. it's a very narrow one, but it still exists. to joe's point, they have pushed away from wisconsin and michigan. not abandoning it entirely. but his advisers are encouraging a narrowing of their nap amap a game plan suggesting travel be cut back and focus on what is basically the sunbelt plus pennsylvania. that's the way to do it. he's got to hold on to georgia and he's got a race there that's far tighter than any republican would have wanted. florida is always close, north carolina as well.

you have to hold that -- that trio in the southeast corner and then, yes, play some catch-up in arizona and then particularly pennsylvania, which of course will be the hardest one of the 2016 states he won to hold on to. a state where he has faced tougher deficits, more than a point or two, but more like three, four, five six depending on the poll and one where joe biden is uniquely situated to keep. a scranton native and also someone who so identifies himself as a political persona with those white, working and middle class voters. that's going to be the state twlink ti think the next wave of polling will tell us a lot about where this race will end up in the next two weeks. >> kasie, the republican party's fewture is ble future is bleak regardless of how this turns out. i'm not saying george bush was saying that in 1999 when

hispanics and the other minorities, that the republican party was going to go the way of the witiongs, it's happening ri now the. but everybody's talking about texas, and we is how because i've got a lot of friends that served in the republican congress and suburbs of dallas and houston that wouldn't be there now. some aren't there now because of -- because of the democrats taking over the suburbs. but the state, for me, that better illustrates the problems that republicans are going to have for the next 20, 30, 40 years is the state of georgia where we used to look at georgia and say, okay, republicans are going to get trounced in downtown atlanta, going to get wiped off the map. but that's okay, we'll pick up in the suburbs. that will sort of even it out and then we'll catch up in the rural areas. now, because of donald trump, republicans live in a world where they get trounced and in the heart of atlanta, and now they're bleeding support

extraordinarily quickly under donald trump in the suburbs. a and there just may not be enough rural areas to help republicans catch up to what they lose in the one massive city in that state. >> it's like theory weng of the suburban women of buck head or something like that. think you're right, joe. that's part of why, you know, if you look at the senate race why mitch mcconnell picked kelly loeffler who has turned out to be a ham handed politician. they wanted somebody that could appeal to those very people, because they know that that is the future of the state. and it is, you know, we have been talking about georgia for a long time and, you know, you can put it in the same category with texas, every time democrats seemed to say we might win there and inevitably are disappointed. but, you know, we all can fall into the trap of covering the last election, right?

democrats are still completely shellshocked by what happened in 2016 to the point that they're reluctant to, you know, in any other circumstance we would probably look at this information about where we have that the trump campaign and republicans stand and say this is clearly a landslide of realignment, the country is rejecting this overwhelmingly. but everyone's afraid to say that. i think the place where we'll answer this question is this realignment, a fundamental realign nlt is realignment is in places like you outlined. the suburbs of georgia and dallas and houston. jake sherman, what is your sense of what republican leaders are thinking right now behind the scenes in because there scenes? because there is going to be this battle royale that say we need to look back to that autopsy in 2017 when mitt romney lost about how the country is changing. you're hearing people like liz cheney make that argument behind closed doors. but the elected republicans that are going to be left in washington are going to be

people like marjorie taylor green from a georgia district who has embraced qanon conspiracy theories. so i'm struggling to wrap my head around how that bat is goi battle is going to play out. >> >> i am too. they're not incentivized. the leadership has tied itself so closely to president trump, i don't know how they eject from that even if he's gone from office. i've talked to the senior republicans that i've talked to, many of whom you know, have said we can't fix our problem in the suburbs until donald trump is gone. he's not going to be gone even if he loses the election. so, i mean, you're seeing -- the fundamental realignment is already happening and it's happening in a very meaningful way, right? you're seeing tight races in the charlotte suburbs, atlanta, dallas, houston, phoenix, places that made up the bedrock of the republican majority. the party is farther -- joe, you talked about 1999. there was an autopsy even in 2012 that said similar things. i would argue the republican party is ten times as far from

those goals as they were in 2012 after a trump presidency. right now the republican party's route to victory is through very red, rural america. and i don't see how that changes right now or in the near future. >> it's funny, jake, mitt romney actually brought up the 2012 postmortem explicitly the other day and said we have completely ignored the lessons we were supposed to have learned from that postmortem report. jake, i'm curious about the senate. how is mitch mcconnell feeling right now he's looks across the map? we've seen some senators come out publicly for the first time in many of their cases and cross the president. obviously that audio that was mysteriously leaked from ben sasse explicitly and going through the items of where donald trump is terrible. john cornyn coming out in his own way and crossing the president. how are they feeling about the senate? do they feel there's a real chance they could lose their 53-47 majority? >> oh, yeah. mcconnell has said that openly that there's a very good chance.

i think he's put it kasie can correct me, 50/50 at this point. which is not great for a leader to be saying. but he understands the politics of these races as good if not better than anybody else. something that sticks out to me, though, is yesterday he's kind of warning the white house to not cut a stimulus deal, which, to me, if you read the tea leaves means that he doesn't think any of his members could be saved by voting for a $2 trillion bill in the week before election day. which, i mean, in any other year that would probably not be the case. he thinks he could lose and i think that he doesn't believe he, himself, will lose. but it's difficult looking at the map as an honest broker here that you think republicans would have a good chance of keeping the majority, at best 50/50. many would say it's much worse. >> and, jake, "politico" morning consult polls you have looking at the nomination of amy coney barrett and how that's going. what do you have?

>> yeah, listen, 51% of people say that they should vote and confirm right now, which is -- which is an interesting statistic. but very interestingly, joe biden has an edge in our poll, 46 to 39 on who's best to handle the supreme court. and as we saw, we noted this in playbook this morning. for the first time that i can remember, i don't want to say the first time ever, joe biden holds a 45-44 advantage on who people trust to handle the economy. that's a big deal that. was the one area that donald trump retained an advantage on. it's the one area republicans tend to always hold an advantage on. and joe biden has captured the advantage there. >> all right. "politico's" jake sherman, thank you so much. coming up, lawyers say they can't find the parents of more than 500 migrant children separated by the trump administration. nbc's julia ainsley joins with us that new reporting. s julia h us that new reporting. here? nah.

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. attorneys appointed by a federal judge to track down the parents of migrant children separated from their families say they cannot locate the parents for 545 of those children. according to a court filing by the american civil liberties union, two-thirds of those parents separated under the 2017 pilot program for the administration's zero tolerance policy were deported to central america before the program was halted by executive order. the parents of more than 550 have been contacted, but only 25 may have a chance to return to the states for reunification with their children. joining us now, nbc news correspondent julia ainsley. this is one of those ongoing stories you've been covering, we've been following where it's -- it's just beyond

staggering. it's shocking and it's just unbelievable that this is happening. >> it is, mika. what's also unbelievable is this task falls to lawyers. when president trump ended family separation through an executive order in june of 2018, he had no plans to go find the families that had been separated and put them back together. he just stopped the separations going forward. and so a judge in california, federal judge, appointed the aclu and other organizations to take data that i.c.e. provide and just said, look, these are families who are separated, take that data and go find them. fortunately, if there is anything fortunate for the familiar separated in may and june of 2018, most of them were still in the country so they could be easily reunified. these families when you're talking about 545 children where we don't know where their parents are, they were separated in a pilot program that largely went under the radar in 2017, no

one was keeping track of where these families were going, and now these attorneys say, look, we can't even find the parents of 545 children and we believe that most of them have been deported. and if they do contact them, they will likely have to come up with this terrible decision, they'll have to make the terrible decision between bringing their children back to an unsafe country or allowing them to stay in the united states with a family member or sponsor in order to keep them protected. >> julia, it's willie. what a story this is. it just stops you in your tracks when it posted yesterday. where are the fundamental question for a lot of people is where are these kids? you alluded to the fact that some of them have been placed with their families, family members, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, whoever that may be. but that can't be all of them. so physically where are these kids? many of them very young. >> well, let's just start with the fact that of those 545 children where we don't know where their parents are, these

legal organizations have even been able to contact 362 of the children themselves. this has been over a year now that the lawyers have had the data but it's so hard to figure out where these people went. it's incredibly complex system, so they don't know where some of those children are. others are here in the united states. like we said, they could be with a family member. what happened when they were separated is they were put into the custody of health and human services and then people could come forward, sponsor them, or they could be sent to live way state sponsor, a foster family and be absorbed into our system here as they try to make a claim for asylum. but what's very clear is that these children and those who are hold enough to remember will have the memories of being separated from their parents by the u.s. government. >> all right. nbc's julia ainsley. thank you very much for your reporting on this. and still ahead, "the new york times" peter baker joins us with his new reporting on the bipartisan effort to shore up

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we have i lot moa lot more ahead. president makes his moment explicit demand yet for the justice department to investigate joe biden. plus, new reporting on the president's previously undisclosed bank account in china. we're back in a moment. n china. we're back in a moment. ♪ i had this hundred thousand dollar student debt. two hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars in debt.

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with a fresh start. cures we can find, futures we can shape, work to reward, d dignity to protect. there is so much we can do if we choose to take on problems and not each other and choose a president who brings out our best. joe biden doesn't need everyone in this country to always agree. just to agree we all love this country and go from there. >> i'm joe biden and i approve this message. >> what a beautiful ad for such -- such a difficult time in washington. a time that, my zbgod, has stretched back over the past few decades. politics taking on really sort

of the characteristic of a blood sport. that is a beautiful ad and it actually is, mika, an ad that moves in the complete on sit direction of where donald trump is, you know, campaigns are about contrast. you have in donald trump a guy whose own campaign brags that he's not a nice guy, but america needs somebody who's not nice right now, who's tough, who can divide, who can fight. joe biden's gone in the completely opposite direction and his bet is, obviously, that the nation is exhaust and they want a return to normalcy, a return to decency. >> the biden campaign launched that new 60-second ad during game one of the world series last night. welcome back to "morning joe." it is wednesday, october 21st. ap's jonathan lemire and kasie

hunt still with us. and we have mike barn knanickal you know, it's interesting, those are the type of ads republicans used to run. i mean, morning in america would show the wheat fields with joe -- >> skeechcenes of america. >> scenes of red state america, blue date is ameri blue state america and the talk about needing to bring everyone together. that's not what donald trump does the at the goes to minnesota and tells americans that aren't white go back to their country. he goes to other campaign rallies and it's -- >> we had a whole super spreader events. >> to divide and that's their strategy right now. joe biden, obviously, again putting out an ad last night, we'll start with you, willie,

that's in stark contrast to that approach. >> you could listen to sam elliot read the phonebook, that's a good place to start. but the biden campaign has understood something from the beginning of this presidential race, and that sis a visceral feeling in the country that it doesn't want to go on like this and feel this way, feel like it's in a state of perpetual combat and waking up to tweets and shouts. and the volume that you see online and social media, the volume that you hear on a lot of cable news is not what the country wants. they want to be soothed. they want to go back to some feeling of normalcy, whatever their political party or whoever they like better, they don't want to wake up and feel this way every day. and that is not a policy position that joe biden's putting out, but it's something they understand about him that he will step us back from the way we feel right now. >> you know, willie, i think one of the reasons the ad is so powerful is because it reflects who joe biden is. not just his campaign, but who

the man is. he is a reflective guy, he's a calm guy. he wants to quiet the nation down. he knows that this is crazy. i mean, we live now in an age where on this program and other programs and in print all over america people write newspaper columns and editorials over the year and they say, you know, is this who we really are as americans? well, it's not who we really are what's going on right now, but it's who we're slowly becoming, loud and brash and arrogant and damaging each other, attacking each other. that's not what people want. people want this country calmed down. and that ad gets to it in a very powerful way. i was really struck by the ad in between watching mookie betts last night, that it's a powerful, powerful piece. but i think it reflects more the candidate than the campaign. >> well, president trump

yesterday, along with 11 congressional republicans, called on attorney general william barr to open an investigation into former vice president joe biden and his son hunter. >> 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 other cal issues that might be uncovered from the former vice president's 47 years in public office. will you be doing that? will you be appointing a special prosecutor? >> 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. this has to be done early. so the attorney general has to act. >> so, peter baker, i don't think we can underline this

enough. you have a sitting president pressuring his attorney general to arrest his political opponent who is ahead of him in the polls 13 days before a presidential election. that's never happened in america before and it sounds far more like what we read in the headlines from belarus and from russia and from hungary. >> yeah. joe, you're right. i spent four years with my wife overseas in moscow covering the former soviet repubslics it's we've never seen anything like this rns, it's not normal. presidents do not use the power of the government and the justice department to open a criminal investigation into their campaign in the last two weeks of the campaign. it's not just that there's not any real basis for it.

remember the senate republicans did a whole report on hunter biden. certainly a lot to criticize about what hunter biden may have done, but no finding that the vice president while he was in office did anything using the power of his office during the obama administration incorrectly or improperly. and so, you know, to have this kind of, you know, focus just less than two weeks before the election, it just -- it's really quite striking. it's not just even joe biden. you hear him at these rallies, he's still talking about locking up hillary clinton. he's talking about, you know, investigating investigating barack obama. he encouraged the crowd that chanted lock her up about gretchen whitmer, the governor of michigan, then says lock them all up. i think that that sort of rhetoric is not the rhetoric of -- of an american democratic election that we're accustomed to. >> so, jonathan lemire, the president has said this now several times, as peter points out, from rally stages.

he's called for joe biden to be, quote, locked up, to be put in prison. is this anything more than rhetoric? i mean, the problem is he's had an attorney general in william barr who's been willing through the last four years do what the president wants to do. now, there are 13 days till election day. there's not going to be an investigation of joe biden and some report filed by then, so what is he doing here exactly? how does this help him get re-elected? >> so there's certainly echoes of 2016 in the arguments the president is trying to make. but, of course, four years ago he was just candidate trump for private citizen, didn't have his hands on levers of government. that is why this so different and dangerous, he's peter said. we've never been here before. this is of course, the president has been pushing for this for a long time. for corruption investigations into joe biden. let's remember he asked ukraine do it. and that's what led him to be impeached earlier this year. he is now, of course, there's been real tension between the president and be attorney general barr in recent weeks

because the president feels that barr has not delivered in some of what he has asked him to do in terms of the unmasking probe and now that the durham investigation is likely not going to be wrapped up before election day. and there may not be any charges stemming from that. the president had hoped this would be sort of an october surprise, an 11th hour argument where he could say that joe biden and his family were corrupt like he tried to say that hillary clinton was four years ago. so there is pressure here. it does seem unlikely there would be any full blown investigation. but even if there was srt u jju the startings of something, the doj, if this stays in the headlines for a few days, it adds to the fog machine and what the president and his allies have done for four years whenever combatted with trying to combat a major scandal or trying to change the narrative in the day to day. and we're seeing him and this is sort of his last perhaps desperate attempt to have the nooition nati

nation be about anything other than the coronavirus. because to this point it hasn't been. it's been a referendum of his handling of the pandemic and americans have soured on how he did it. >> it's funny because as the president an congressional republicans try to paint joe biden as soft on china, influenced, they say, by his son hunter's alleged financial connections to the country, the latest installment on the president's taxes says the president has his own financial ties to the chinese state. a republican senate report on hunter biden notes among its evidence of questionable foreign connections that he, quote, opened a bank account with a chinese businessman. but the times reports that china, along with britain and ireland is a nation where the president is linked to a bank account. the times reports that mr. trump spent a decade unsuccessfully pursuing projects in china, operating an office there during his first run for president, and

forging a partnership way majit major government-controlled company. they do not show up on mr. trump's financial disclosures he must list financial assets because they are held under corporate names. according to the times, trump international hotels management is the trump company with the chinese bank account and which the tax records show paid more than $188,000 in taxes in china while pursuing licensing deals there from 2013 to 2015. in response to questions from the times, trump organization attorney allan garden said the company opened an account with china having offices in the united states in order to pay the local taxes associated with efforts do business there. no deals, transactions, or other business activities ever materialized and since 2015 the

office has remained inactive. though the bank account remains open, it has never been used for any other purpose. >> peter, we go back to john heilemann talking about everything that donald trump says is either projection or confession. of course, you look at those licensing deals, you look at donald trump suggesting that joe biden's children profited from a relationship with china' whether, of course, we heard stories of his own children of ivanka getting licensing deals in china during pivotal moments in the trump/xi relationship. and of course there's just a long, long list of donald trump even in 2020, list of quotes of donald trump praising president xi. that relationship far closer than the president wants to admit right now. >> well, i think this is one reason, of course, why it's been so important to get a hold of the president's tax returns, right?

to have a completely open book on a president who has so many financial interests, not just in this country, but overseas. in order to understand what kind of, you know, factors and dynamics influence a president in his decision-making on policy. the president has gone so far as the supreme court to try to hide these tax records. these tax records indicate that there's a lot of things that you would think that the american public might want to know about. among other things, for instance, it shows that he has 400 some million dollars in debt, much uh which of which wi due in he wins a second term. at least a lot of that would be held by a foreign bank. we don't know for sure. i think deutsch bank is believed to be the holder of a lot of that debt. these are issues you can imagine that are relevant to a president and the conduct of foreign policy and why these tax returns, you know, ought to have been released years ago. and it only came out because my

colleagues spent years literally trying to dig around until they could finally get ahold of records like these. i think this is, you know, this goes to the whole question of account bltd a accountability and transparency in the presidency. >> and kasie hunt, the president has very willing partners in congress to help him with this investigation or push to be investigate hunter biden. who are they? >> well, mika, it's really the list of usual suspects. and there is this sort of handful of real pro trump loyalists in the house republican party, louie gohmert probably the headliner there, no surprise. but, they are not necessarily the majority of republicans, i wouldn't say. there has been some concern from more moderate republicans about this question. and mitt romney has spearheaded that on the senate side. remember there are was a big investigation led by ron johnson into what they call crossfire

hurricane, a lot of these questions about ukraine in particular. and ultimately they didn't come up with very much in that report, despite spending a lot of time on it. and, you know, i think the question here and the question that we're going to have to grapple with and that as i'm having conversations with my sources it's kind of -- it looks like it may be playing out this way, right? we have an attorney general and the new part of the president's call is asking bill barr to do -- to take up this investigation, right? and then you also have looming an election that may have a lot of lawsuits and question marks in the aftermath. and republicans are going to have to decide which side they're going to play on. if president trump's lawyers take this to the courts and raise all of these questions, demand these investigations, demand these levers of power be used inappropriately, they're going to have to decide if they're going to support that or if they're going to reject it. and the suggestions that i'm getting so far in my reporting

are that republicans are not ready to blow up the country over donald trump if, in fact, it is clear that he has lost inside the legal system. but there does seem to be a willingness to let president trump and his lawyers at least try to figure out a way to win the election if that is possible. so, i think that they're headed for a real reckoning, and we need to be really focused on what is bill barr doing day to day? how is he interacting with the trump campaign? how are they interacting with these states where these lawsuits are going come? and then what are congressional republicans doing about that? how are they talking to the attorney general? what are they saying about what the attorney general should be doing? and how all of that is going to play out in the event that these questions are raised. i don't think this is something that we should gloss over. it's certainly not something that i'm going to be glossing over as, you know, i spend time reporting with these republicans on capitol hill.

>> yeah, no, it's absolutely critical story because the trump campaign is hoping that the race will be close enough, that they can sue their way to victory that. barr can step, an important point, in one state or another and go state by state. so if it is a close race, we're going to be seeing legal challenges for quite some time. peter baker, tom riggs has a book out where he studies the foundation of this constitutional republic and talks about the development of the constitution. and he said that george washington, obviously the first president, believed in public virtue. it was absolutely critical and that a president should be given deference and the only way our government works is if we have a president with -- with virtue, as defined by the romans, public virtue. and madison and hamilton were

more skeptical, put in more checks and balances. but ricks does describe how the presidency depends still in great part on having a good-faith actor sitting in there. you've written a story about how just as watergate led to watergate reforms, how donald trump's presidency may lead to trump reforms. and it's really a question that -- that i'm continually grappling with. and that's why i loved your article, found it fascinating the what are some of the solutions that congress and reformers may do moving forward? >> after watergate, as you know, joe have they tried to fix the systems in ways that they could. they instituted new campaign finance rules. now transparency, freedom of information, presidential records act. they established the ethics in government whaact when includinn

independent counsel. not all of them worked that well. think what we've discovered also in the last four years is, as you put it, joe, a lot of constraints we saw on presidents in the post watergate period were restraints of their own acceptance and deference rather than legal or binding rules. this president is showing can he do an awful lot of things that we thought presidents didn't do or couldn't do and still have the authority, apparently, to do them. so what these reformers are talking about are ways of restricting for instance the president's pardon power so he couldn't pardon himself or use the pardon power to obstruct justice by influencing witnesses against him. bolstering the power of a special counsel. we no longer have independent counsel, which is what was created after watergate because republicans and democrats alike got tired of that after the ken starr and iran koon contra affair. but a special counsel that would report to congress or the public the idea that this would not be beholden to the administration

it was investigating. a variety of other reforms. rewriting the authorization to use force that's been in place since 2001 in the terrorist attacks rf 9/11. restricting the fbi director from opening and closing investigations without some input from the attorney general as happened during the hillary clinton email case. there are a variety of ideas that people have out there. whether or not that would be -- there would be a bipartisan consensus the way there kind of was after watergate, that's a bigger question. it obviously depends on whether president trump wins a second term. and it's also questionable whether or not these by themselves would necessarily, you know, make a radical change. as you say, a lot of it does depend on the nature of the person who holds the office and the constraints that they feel either politically or morally or ethically or, have to know, just in terms of their understanding of what the separation of powers really is all about. >> mike, i know you have a

question for peter, but i just i want to get your thoughts on something that's disturbed me over the past four years. it's concept that in america the president is above the law. i think the justice department guidance that a president can't be indicted is absolutely preposterous. there's no reason why donald trump getting re-elected would stop him from facing the same justice that other americans would face if they were in his position. we have to look at the pardon power. donald trump using the pardon power to obstruct investigations, as peter said. using the power to commute a sentence to help political allies that may have been involved in a political conspiracy with him. and finally i think the most troublesome question, our attorney general. i was worried about this before barr, long before barr, if we

have an attorney jengeneral thas appointed by the president of the united states and prosecutors who are appointed by the president of the united states and you have a corrupt president like donald trump that can kill investigations, pressure the attorney general to stop investigations whether it's in the southern district of new york or any where else across the united states that has the power to get the attorney general to back off of investigations of a political ally or to lean in as we're seeing now to investigations of a political enemy. it seems to me if you're a democrat or a republican or an independent, you would want to have an attorney general that may be appointed by the president, is but not approved unless there's a super majority of congress supporting someone who is so beyond reproach that they would get two-thirds of the house and senate voting for them. >> joe, you've touched upon one of the most corrosive and

corrupting aspects of the trump administration, which is the corruption, the slow corruption, the slow steady corruption of the justice department led by attorney general bill barr. it's been going on since he was sworn in as attorney jgeneral. now as we close in to election day, lurking out there still we have the john durham investigation, what's going on with that. i mean, traveling through europe together with john durham, the attorney general traveling through europe with an investigator. we've had the unmasking farce that was just exposed over the past few days. and peter baker, your piece in the times focuses on two highly respected lawyers, both former members of the federal government, one republican, one democrat. what directionally is the plan or do they have a plan yet for isolating and insulating going forward the department of justice in future attorneys general from the tainted by campaigns and corruption and

politics? >> yeah, think that's a really huge issue, you're right, because that's, you know, the perceiv perceived politicization of the justice department is the lasting legacies. it opens the question to what future president cos do. bill barr h bill barr has been very pliable to this president ceding things like lower sentences for roger stone and reversing decision for michael flynn. so far he's not ceded to the president in opening up an investigation on joe biden in the final days of a campaign. imagine if you had an even more plieb pliable attorney general who would. the president does control the executive branch and has the authority and power over the justice department. he has apparently very -- if not unlimited, at least very expansive ability to use the justice department in ways that we once thought were out of bounds. and so the question is how do you try to rein that in?

the two lawyers are jack goldsmith who served as the assistant attorney general for george w bush and bob bauer who served as the white house counsel for barack obama. mr. bauer is advising a senior adviser to the biden campaign, so i think this book could read blueprint if biden were to win the election. but the most important thing is to see what do about accountability in the justice department. the special counsel would be not to report necessarily just to a bill barr who would then take the report and characterize it the way he wanted to the way he did during the mueller experience, but in fact the special counsel would report to the public, would report to congress and the findings would become known to everybody. also, the ideas that they have include protecting inspectors general. you'll remember that the president has purged inspectors general when he found impropriety in his own

administration. those were meant as a check on excessive executive power, for instance, and he's basically shoved them out when they crossed him. so there are all sorts of ideas in this plan and house democrats under adam schiff and others have a plan of their own. think you'll see a whole, you know, germnation of this. that raise the partisan reform and everything is better if there's bipartisan buy-in. >> thank you so much for your reporting. and we want to mention peter's new book, it's the man who ran washington, the life and times of james a. baker iii. >> it's a great book. >> now to other stories we're following this morning, mail-in ballots post marked by 5:00 p.m. on election day will be counted in north carolina until november 12th. the u.s. court of appeals made the decision in a 12-3 ruling last night. the news comes after the state's

attorney general's office and board of elections have been battling republican lawmakers to extend collection times due to increased demand and an overwhelmed postal system. wisconsin voters headed to the polls in large numbers yesterday kicking off the start of early voting in one of the country's largest pandemic hot spots. voters began showing up before sunrise forming lines that stretched more than a block in some areas. election officials and health officials worked together to lay out protective measures intended to keep in-person voters safe while at the polls. voters are being asked to use pencil erasers when casting their vote as opposed to their fingers making it safer to use the voting machines, touchscreen surfaces. election workers also wiped down booths with disinfectant after each use. in addition, voters were mandated to wear masks, social

distance, and sanitize their hands upon entering voting sites. and a new report finds that women make up nearly 70% of frontline health care workers and have a higher risk of being infected with the coronavirus. according to the united nation's annual world's women report, women are also disproportionately burdened with the emotional impacts of the pandemic largely because many have had to take on additional care giving and domestic responsibilities, according to the "washington post." although men are more likely to die of complications of covid-19, the fact that women make up a majority of medical workers, including doctors and nurses, means they are more likely to be infected on the job. and up next, we'll have the latest on the growing toll from coronavirus as president trump again claims it's going away. we'll bring in two health experts. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back.

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what we're calling we're rounding the turn on the pandemic. 56% and it's a record. epic job growth. safe vaccines that quickly end the pandemic. it's ending. normal life, that's all we want. you know what we want? normal life. [ cheers and applause ] normal life will finally resume, and next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country. [ cheers and applause ] >> amen to all of us wanting a return to normal life, but we're not rounding the corner. the president last night again telling his supporters the virus is going away. meanwhile, according to a weekly white house coronavirus task force report, 31 states are now in what they call the red zone. that means they had more than

100 new covid-19 cases per 100,000 residents. that's up from 26 states just last week. joining us now, "morning joe" chief medical correspondent dr. dave campbell and former obama white house health adviser and provost of global initiatives at the university of pennsylvania, ezekiel manual. he's an nbc news senior medical contributor and author of the book which country has the world's best health care. doctors, good morning you to both. zeke, let me start with you about the president's statement about rounding the corner. we know that's objectively untrue so we can put that to the side. but where are your areas of concerns right now? we know places like wisconsin are waving the red flag right now saying we are at capacity in our hospitals. where else are you look right now? >> well, all up and down the midwest you can see missouri, tennessee, western tennessee has a lot of cases. north dakota has a lot of cases. and north dakota, i think, hospitals are also maxed out.

it's really, you know, it went from new york, new england area down to the southeast, down to the southwest, california, and now it's in the midwest. every place it hasn't been, it's going. and you saved nothing by being in a rural area. people travel and the virus travels and especially if you think you're protected, that's probably your most dangerous moment. and now we're about to head into, you know, serious cold, serious moving in to the indoors. and we know that transmission increase when's you're indoors with a lot of people for a prolonged period of time. and that is the most serious problem we're all anticipating that we're going to have this profusion of cases. and thanksgiving say serious problem. i would say one other thing, i guess, dr. zadave is in florida and florida because of the president's rally and the sort of relaxing of almost every restriction probably right after thanksgiving is due for a big

bump. >> a new report by the cdc, by the way, dr. dave, says that the coronavirus pandemic has caused nearly 300,000 more deaths than expected in a typical year. about two-thirds of those deaths were from covid-19 and the rest from other causes. the report found an unexpected trend while more deaths from all causes occurred in older populations, the highest average percent increase in the number of deaths relative to previous years was among adults aged between 25 to 44 years old. so we're looking at the death rate overall changing, dr. dave, because of this pandemic. and as zeke pointed out, the next couple of weeks, you know, kind of following and mapping out the president's super spreader rallies we'll see pops in those places, will they not? >> absolutely. we're already seeing that trend

in florida and as zeke said, across the country. as hospitalizations go up, we're going to follow in a few weeks with increasing death rates, that lagging indicator that we unfortunately became used to and understood in the spring as we went into the summer. so now we're seeing this third peak happening, and we're now seeing from the cdc a representation of what that has actually done to the number of people who are dying beyond an outside of what we would have expected by looking at prior years. the two-thirds is what we talk about all the time with covid-related deaths, hospitalizations, severe and critical covid disease. it's that one-third that's frightening beyond belief, because it's in young adults. and it could -- it could be related to the diseases of despair, increasing alcohol rates, increasing drug use and suicide. we have also seen, mika,

increasing rates of overdose clearly being laid out in the spring and the summer, and we anticipate all of that will surge into the fall and winter as people are home, they're stressed out, they're isolated, those that are in substance abuse treatment have disinterrupted treatmedisrupted treatment, they've lost their connectedness. and to finish off the concerns we all have, there's an increase in the dangerous illicit synthetic drug supply with fentanyl and methamphetamine and what they call the analogs or cousins of fentanyl. so we have all of these things combining now in the fall and winter that are -- are on the shoulders of those young adults with addictions and older people who are probably drinking far more than they should, mika. >> yeah, all these follow-on impacts of coronavirus. i want to point to some good

news. we learned yesterday about two peer review studies that showed mortality rates improving in terms of the treatment of coronavirus since the beginning of the pandemic until now that the percentage of deaths from cases of coronavirus has really plunged, which points to what doctors have learned about coronavirus and ways to treat people once they're in the hospital. what more can you tell us about that? >> yeah, in march we didn't know how to effectively treat this disease. but since that time we've learned -- experience has taught certain techniques, laying the patient down on their stomach is much better. trying not to put them on a ventilator is much more important. and then we have some of these drugs everyone talks in the u.s. about remdesivir, but probably the real home run in terms of reducing deaths has been dexamethasone, a very cheap, widely used, and long-used drug, steroid. and that reduces the mortality rate of people who need

supplemental oxygen by about a third. so that's a real game changer in some ways. and then we have some of these newer cocktails like the regeneron cocktail that the president got that may turn out to be valuable. so both experience with how to manage patients and some new drugs have really made a lot of difference. >> dr. zeke emanuel and dave camp pell, thank you both for being on this morning. and coming up, more on the president's demand that the attorney general investigate his opponent joe biden. plus, former federal prosecutor barb ara mcquade on the charges a former president trump could face if the former vice president joe biden decides to investigate. "morning joe" can coming right back. investigate. "morning joe" can coming right back.

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every die yay you wake out, where's biden?

sir, he's litted out. what does that mean? that means he's going to stay in the basement all day. but i think today he's staying in the basement to talk to his lawyers. they called him -- [ cheers and applause ] [ chanting lock him up ]. >> is he lucky that we have in our country and they don't appreciate a wonderful human being and the most fair attorney general of the united states, because i know people that would have had him locked up five weeks ago. bill barr is a very nice man and a very fair man. and they have no idea because somebody else would have taken that thing and all the crap and corruption. he's been a corrupt politician for a long time this guy. >> it's just -- it's hard to believe. joining us now, state attorney for palm beach county, dave aronberg and former u.s.

attorney and msnbc contributor barbara mcquade who cowrote a piece for "the washington post" on sunday titled a rap sheet for a former president in which they outlines all that trump could be investigated for once he's out of office. actually, i want to start there, barbara. so, okay. scenario, president trump loses the election and walks out of the white house. can you list for us what he's up against legally? could he go to jail? >> he could, mika. now, of course, the next attorney general will have to make a decision not only whether charges can be brought but whether charges should be brought. and that's a very difficult decision. but just based on public reporting, there appears to be sufficient evidence to open investigations for a number of different crimes. for example, obstruction of justice. robert mueller laid that out in his report, there's at least four episodes where every element of the offense is met for president trump's efforts to obstruct the investigation into interference with russia.

bribery. there is certainly sufficient evidence in the record from the impeachment trial where president trump was talking with the president of ukraine in an effort to do a quid pro quo, as the testimony supported of doing a favor by announcing an investigation into joe biden as a condition of receiving military aid from the united states. there's also been reporting about bribery using the trump properties, like mar-a-lago and trump international hotel in exchange for staying at those properties getting access to the president for people doing business with the united states. there are also allegations out there of obstruction of the work of a federal agency which would be considered a conspiracy against the united states. if there is an effort to slow down the mail leading up to election day in an effort to impede the election. violations for the way the president has used the white house for campaign events and even though he's not subject to

them, if he is demanding or ordering others to violate the hatch act, that could be a problem. and then the one that's most powerful of all, because there's no ability for him to pardon self in advance of leaving the office, but the state charges that cyrus vance is working on, those appear to be probably the most promising based on insurance fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and tax fraud. the allegations we've seen already seem to support six charges and we node that cyrus vance is working hard to get his hands on the financial records that president trump is fighting very hard to avoid turning over. >> so the president could nfis that laundry list of charges. but first there's an election. i want to ask you about what we heard from the president coming off the break. he said that he's lucky that bill barr is there and he's a good and honest man. but yesterday went further.

he said specifically we've got to get the attorney general to act. he's got to act. he's got to act fast. the president calling for an investigation into his opponent now 13 days before election day. what are your concerns about that? particularly because of who the attorney general is and the willingness he's shown in the past to act on behalf of the president. >> i don't know that william barr is -- is even william barr will take the bait on this one. because even if true, the worst allegation that we have seen is that hunter biden wanted to set up a meeting with joe biden to meet some of the burisma executives. that's not a crime and not inappropriate. the supreme court held in the mcdonald case out of virginia that merely setting up meetings does not amount to very corruption. i think there's no there there and even william barr will know that. but i think what donald trump really wants is exactly what he wanted from the ukrainian president, an announcement that there is something afoul here, just as he did with hillary

clinton's emails. he just wants to be able to say at his rallies and put out there in conservative right-wing news course is sources that there is something corrupt about joe biden. that's all he needs. because it can help offset his own corruption so that own corruption so voterser left with a false equivalency. i suspect william barr will not take the bait but i suspect talking about it is enough for donald trump. >> yeah, and dave ehrenberg, another example of crashing through democratic norms in plain sight, president trump urging the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate joe biden. what do you make of that? >> mika, the president is taking a page from the desperation chab ter of the dictator's playbook. his other october surprises have not worked. the durham report still hasn't come out. it won't come out until after the investigation. the investigation into the unmasking and spying of his

campaign has been a big nothing burger. hunter biden's laptop, that whole thing has been fizzling. it looks like i it's tied to vladimir putin in moscow. so he is stuck. this sounds familiar. barbara is right. this is what we saw of the president of ukraine where he is demanding an announcement of an investigation because he knows the power of that. even though it got him impeached, he knows that's how he got elected in 2016 when james comey came out at "the 11th hour" to announce a reopen an investigation into hillary's email. if it does happen, it's not going to work because, first, there are very few undecided voters left. more importantly, there is no evidence that joe biden did anything wrong. barbara's right. prosecutors do not open investigations based on disinformation provided by russian intelligence. and the more that president trump demands the arrest or investigation into joe biden, the harder it is for bill barr to do his bidding.

bill barr does not want to end up in a prison cell like john mitchell, the former attorney general for richard nixon who served 19 months in prison after watergate. after jan, dona january and donald trump and bill barr will be gone and all hell could break loose. if it happens, i think it will backfire on them. >> we want your take on this, dave. exxonmobil is denying that its ceo has spoken to president trump about campaign donations after the president used the company as the foil in a hypothetical phone call to display his fundraising prowess during a rally in arizona. >> i would be the greatest fundraiser in history. all i have to do is calm the head of every wall street firm, every major company, every major energy company. do me a favor. tend me ten million for my campaign. yes, sir. they say the only thing, why

didn't you ask for more, sir? said i would be -- i would take in more money. but you know what? i don't want to do that because if i do that i'm totally compromised. i call some guy, the head of exxon. i don't know, i'll use a company. hi, how you doing? how is energy coming? when are you doing the exploration? you need a couple of permits, huh? okay. i call the head of exxon. i say, you know, i'd love you to send me $25 million for the campaign. absolutely, sir, would you like some more? and if i make the call -- now, people make the call, it's different. but if i made the call,et h i w hit a home run every single call. >> following those comments the company tweeted we are aware of the president's statement regarding a hypothetical call with our ceo and just so we're all clear, it never happened. it also would be illegal, dave

ehrenberg, on -- explain what exactly the president blurted out there that exxon is saying, no way. >> mika, he was speaking hypothetically. but if it happened, it would be a federal crime, solicitation of bribery for a public official to demand something of value to which he is not entitled in exchange for the performance of an official act. that's why exxon pushed back. they knew they would be implicated in it, too. politicians have lee ray in asking for campaign donations. they can't make it a quid pro quo, which is what the president was describing. i think the value, mika, is that it provides a window into his thinking. the president is clearly upset that joe biden has a major financial advantage and he is embarrassed by the fact that his once mighty finance operation, the campaign that brad parscale once described as the death star, has been exposed to be nothing except for make an ewok army or jar jar binks.

if you are not a "star wars" fan, mika, trust me, that's not a compliment. >> understood. dave ehrenberg and barbara mcquade, thank you very much for being on this morning. still ahead, president trump rallies in erie, pennsylvania, and tells his supporters he is only there because his campaign is struggling, really doesn't want to be there. we will show you that moment. plus, we are digging into new battleground polling that shows the state of the race just 13 days out from election day. "morning joe" will be right back.

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the president or anyone at the white house ever asked or suggested you open an investigation of anyone? >> i wouldn't -- i wouldn't -- >> yes or no? >> could you repeat that question?

>> the attorney general to act. >> the president or anybody else? >> seems you'd remember something like that, be able to tell us. >> yeah, but i'm try to grapple with the word suggest. >> he's got to act fast, he has to appoint somebody. >> they have not asked me to open an investigation but -- >> perhaps they suggested? >> this is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election. >> i don't know. i wouldn't say suggest. >> hinted? >> i don't know. >> inferred? you don't know? okay. >> this has to be done early so the attorney general has to act. >> senator harris now the democratic vice presidential nominee finally gets an answer to a question she asked the attorney general more than a year ago. >> you know -- >> better late than never. >> you know, willie, i'm surrounded most of the people that i see every day are voting for donald trump. most of the friends i grew up

with are voting for donald trump, and it's good talking to them and just saying, so why are you voting for this man? they go, well, he a terrible guy, he is a horrible example for my kids, i'd never invite him over to the house. he's despicable. i hate him. i just hate him, but, and then fill in the blank. aoc or nancy pelosi or bernie sanders or regulations or tax cuts or 401(k)s. and i say, so, well, we have right now a president of the united states who is demanding that his attorney general arrest the vice president, former vice president of the united states. his chief political competitor. >> this is something that happens or happened in the

former soviet union. this is something that happens still in russia. this is not what soft hotel affairian looks like. this is what full-blown autocracy looks like if you focus on the actions of the president of the united states and you are telling me you are more concerned about nancy pelosi? outside of the white house than you are an autocrat inside of the white house? the justifications from, again, my friends are extraordinary, but this is just one of 100 examples that we could cite that shows just this massive disconnect between what are

actions that the president is taking that are unamerican and the justification for voting for this man who is vyitrying to art his political rivals on the eve of what he believes to be an election defeat. >> part of the challenge of the trump years has been that there are so many outrageous claims and so many outrageous statements from the president that it's hard to stop sometimes and look one in the eye before the next one comes. but, as you say, right now the president of the united states, less than two weeks ahead of the election, is calling for the attorney general of the united states to launch an investigation that i think he somehow thinks will be resolved before the -- election day in some way, muddy the waters before election day. he goes farther than that at his rallies calling for joe biden to be locked up. you get the sense, if he could, he would direct attorney general barr to throw joe biden into prison and be done with it. but this is a man, donald trump, who is desperate. this is a man who is looking at the polls. this is a man who is spending his days calling for joe biden

to be locked up, attacking a "60 minutes" interviewer, attacking dab moderators. anything he can do to change the conversation from coronavirus, which is what will decide this election perhaps to his peril. >> right. >> and i'm wondering, mika, if somebody says, you know, donald trump will probably be better for my 401(k) than joe biden even though moody's and others on wall street suggest that's really not the case because we'll have stability and the white house will have stability in the markets, stability in trade and negotiations, we will have stability across the globe. but even if they make that argument, so, you know, the 401(k) maybe went down 20% this year. are they saying that electing a president who is trying to arrest his political opponent in america two weeks before an election, are they saying that maybe they'd lose 25% of their

401(k) under biden but 20% under trump? and that 5% is worth throwing away american democracy on a guy who claims to have unlimited powers because of article 2? a guy that questions the federal judiciary's independence and a guy who is trying the best he can to have his political opponent arrested two weeks before a free election. and let me remind you all, my friends and loved ones, in the united states of america. not in belarus. not in hungary. not in russia. in the united states of america. what is worth that? you know, i have heard also, mika, this other excuse. the press is liberal. so, okay. so you're voting for a guy who is trying to arrest his political opponent because you

don't like what don lemon says on cnn? you want to appoint a man who says he has unlimited powers and can do whatever he wants to do and calls for the arrests of journalists who question him like jeff mason and, well, like me repeatedly? you are going to vote for him because lawrence o'donnell makes you mad? because you don't like "the new york times"? it's, again, it really there is no logic to it. this is you desperately trying to justify something that you know can't really rationally be justified. i haven't seen gotten to the racism, to the muslim registry, to the patient call hispanics breeders. haven't even gotten to that. haven't even gotten to charlottesville, to the president telling white

supremacists, quote, to stand by, to the president talking about assassinating his political rivals with second amendment solutions to stop them from appointing judges to the supreme court. haven't seen gotten through four, five years of haven't eve president of the united states saying that he would not guarantee -- repeatedly in debates -- the peaceful transfer of power. he did eventually after the fifth or sixth time. >> not really. >> yeah, sure, sure, i'll guarantee that, but what antifa, what about this, what about that? i haven't even talked about all of those things. you add it up. this is a man, and you know this, would be an autocrat if he could, would be a dictator if he could. you know that. you said that to me. many of you have said you know that if he loses, he can't leave america because our government

would be afraid that he would sell state secrets. our most classified secrets to other countries. some of you tell me you think he is going to end up in jail, that you are going to vote for him anyway. you know, i'm tom hanks in "big." i don't get it. i don't get it. i don't get it. you're my best friends. you're my family members. and you're going to believe garbage that you read on facebook. >> they don't even care that he accused you of murder, tried to get you investigated. >> you still are telling me, even though i have told you repeatedly it's a lie, and sent you evidence, you're still

saying you may not take a vaccines ne vax /* vaccine next year because anthony fauci has a take in it. that's just a lie. and i love you, but you have to be really, really stupid or willfully ignorant if you still believe that lie because it's not the truth. you just send facebook posts to each other that exacerbate these lies. >> coming up, president trump tells supporters the only reason he's visiting their city is because the pandemic forced his hand. that unusual closing message is straight ahead. and as we go to break, a note joe's new book saving freedom, truman and the cold war fight for western civilization is coming out on november 24th. preorder it now. "morning joe" is back in a moment. k in a moment needs help customizingere their car insurance with liberty mutual, so they only pay for what they need.

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whole thing. before it came in, i wasn't coming to erie. i have to be honest. there was no way i was coming. i didn't have to. i would have called you, hey, erie, if you have a chance, get out and vote. we had this thing won. >> that's interesting. so thank you -- >> didn't want to be there. >> thank you, we don't want to be here. jonathan lamire, the president has been on edge the past couple of days. two days ago one of the angriest performances on a tarmac. then yesterday he storms off the set with lesley stahl. >> oh, yeah. >> >> tearing off his mic, attacking lesley stahl. goes to erie last night, says thank you, i don't want to be here. his wife stays back at the white house, doesn't come, supposedly a nagging cough. what's going on in the land of donald j. trump? >> president trump didn't want to be in erie last night apparently. i did. i was there with him for that

rally. >> really? >> yeah, it was shorter than most. he has been clocked in under an hour. to be fair, it was pretty chilly last night. you're right. the president here last is supp to be his closing argument. he said that the choice is between the trump economic recovery or if you elect joe biden and his socialist policies and tax cuts and so on it will slow down the recovery. you put it as a depression. that is what his advisors wanted him to say for weeks now. unfortunately, for them he continues to step on it with sideshows. yes, we had a few more yesterday. a day after his attacks on dr. fauci, he stormed out of a "60 minutes" interview, attacked the interviewer lesley stahl on twitter, threatened to release a videotape, whatever that means, of the video. perhaps the white house made its own recording. we have pressed as to what that means. but it does reflect his private mood, joe, as you said.

monday on the tarmac he lanced into reporters. aides say he is increasingly growing concerned this race is slipping away from him. he is running out of time. he declares he still going to win. we have seen some public comments where he acknowledged he could use. he mused about how could he lose to joe biden who privately he says is someone he feels is shot, has lost it. publicly, he thought he might have it leave the country if indeed he did. and he is seen here, he was in pennsylvania last night, the state that matters perhaps most of all in the electoral college map. he will be there a lot in the next two weeks. there is a frustration that trajectory of the race is unchanged. it is about the pandemic and his response. and the sideshows that he is trying to engage in day after day just aren't working. >> and pandemic relief, kasie hunt, apparently mitch mcconnell might have a different point of view about when people should get it.

the president loves to put checks in people's hands. almost so transactional it hurts. but where does pandemic relief stand for people who have been waiting for some sort of help? >> well, if he wanted to put checks with his name on them into people's mailboxes, pockets before the election, he should have done it a couple of weeks ago instead of sending a tweet that blew up all of the negotiations, contrary to his own political interests ahead of this election. and, yeah, it's just not clear that we are going to get anything before election day here. the dynamics are complicated. mnuchin, the administration and nancy pelosi seem to want to get something done, they say they are still at the table. for mitch mcconnell the politics are complicated and he let it be known yesterday that he told his members in a private meeting

that he doesn't -- he is telling the white house don't do it before election day. joe knows this well. the politics can change on a dime if this really is the kind of landslide election that some of the polls suggest it could be not just for the white house, but also across the senate map, which if you look and dig into the numbers, it looks worse for senate republicans than potentially for the president. that's going to change things in congress, and mitch mcconnell running potentially an opposition party means, you know, i think it could mean it's less likely people get the help that they need. i think there is some real questions for americans, for their families, but also for our economy more broadly. the federal reserve, a lot of people have raised concerns about the lack of action from congress and the implications that that could have. so a lot of dire consequences here. but the erie moment, it just made me think back to -- i mean, first of all, what political

candidate goes somewhere and says i don't want to be here? you go to ask for people's votes and say i didn't want to come ask for injuyour vote? it's mind boggling. we were talking about "star wars," think of the death star. brad parscale called the campaign a death star. it blows up at the end of the movie, which is an image when you have a presidential candidate campaigning and saying i don't want to be here. that seems to be happening to this campaign in the final weeks. >> coming up, the widow of a new jersey police officer struck down by coronavirus. we'll speak with alice roberts who penned a powerful piece on the president's handling of the pandemic and a plea she is making to voters this november. that conversation is next on "morning joe." ation is next on "morning joe." your journey requires liberty mutual.

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the unfair money bail system. he, accused of rape. while he, accused of stealing $5. the stanford rapist could afford bail; got out the same day. the senior citizen could not; forced to wait in jail nearly a year. voting yes on prop 25 ends this failed system, replacing it with one based on public safety. because the size of your wallet shouldn't determine whether or not you're in jail. vote yes on prop 25 to end money bail. powerfully and personally about the impact covid-19 has had on her family and the way it's being mismanaged from inside the white house. alice roberts writes this. after catching covid-19 that required a brief stay in the hospital, president trump said

don't let it take over your lives. it's much too late for that, of course, for my family and me. it took over our lives when it took my husband rob. rob was a beloved police officer and likely contracted covid-19 while working an overtime shift like he often did to support our family of three kids, two geckos, a dog, a cat, and two hamsters. many shifts were open in his department because his colleagues were becoming sick with the virus. by april, eight of them tested positive out of a department of 24 people. rob's first covid-19 test was mislabeled. the second one took too long to come back. when he collapsed at our home, we still did not know that he had it. his co-workers rushed to our house and resuscitated him, risking their own lives to save his. in the hospital a talented team of doctors and nurses gave him powerful drugs and he recovered

from the virus. however, rob's brain never rebounded from the lack of oxygen from when he collapsed. in the hospital, rob's mother and i saw him in person only twice because of restrictions during the pandemic. first on mother's day and the next morning when he was taken off the ventilator. he was 45 years old. and alice roberts joins us now. so, alice, i don't know how to put into words how sorry we are for your loss and for your three kids losing their dad. you wrote this, you wanted to send a message to the american people, a message to voters. but first, can you tell us how your family is doing? >> sure. so i guess my kids are staying very busy. they have never ridden their bikes more than now.

i think we just keep moving. we don't sit still for very long. and i have always been like that, but even more so now just because you just don't want to have to sit and think about things. so we keep moving, moving, moving all the time. >> do you all talk about what you wrote about, about coronavirus in america, how it's being handled? do your kids express the same concerns you do about the mismanagement? do they see maybe perhaps that his life could have been saved? >> yeah, i was told by my husband's brain specialist, who is a very wise man, that you have to move forward and you really can't look backwards. so i try to take that advice to heart. and we watch a lot of news in our house. my favorite subject to teach, i am a teacher, is social studies. i was raised by a social studies teacher and professor.

so my kids are very aware of what goes on in the world, and i let them form their own opinions. i don't tell them how to think. but i do give them the tools to make their own opinions. and they know i've been pretty vocal in the biden campaign. and when trump got sick and then he miraculously got better so quickly, we saw his true colors. we were all pretty disgusted by what we saw. >> we're showing a really beautiful picture of your entire family, including rob next to you. can you it put into words what kind of father your three kids have lost, what the house is missing today? >> it's just very quiet. it's like an energy has been sucked out of our lives. he was very, very instrumental,

and he basically split time with me. on his days off, he was in charge of the kids while i was at work. even when they were in preschool, he was the one doing all the school pickups, you know. moms and dads saw him way more at the school than they saw me because i'm a teacher, too. i would never be at pickups and drop-offs. he was a baseball coach, a soccer coach. so with my kids returned to their sports this season, which i'm glad they have, it just felt very empty to have him not be there coaching. even when he was working we would stop by the kids' games because we live in the town where he works and where i work as well. even when he was working he was always just right there. i kind of still expect him to like pop in the door for a lunch break. it's still really -- i know people don't think this is real. it's not really real to me yet. it hasn't fully sank in. >> alice, it's willie geist. i am so glad you are here with us today and i'm so sorry about the loss of rob.

you do have a beautiful family as we can seen on the photographs on the screen this morning. i desperately don't want to make you go through the worst days of your life, but i think tit's im for people not taking some of the restrictions seriously. did rob have any pre-existing conditions, anything that might have exacerbated this for him? >> no. he was pretty healthy, i would say. we were always walking and bike riding and we were very active. i would say i honestly think the overtime probably ran him down because the police work 12-hour shifts. i think sleep deprivation can help make you sick. you know, but that's just what he did. >> so he is a healthy guy, a police officer, a great dad, as you pointed out here. so you said you only had a chance to actually see him twice in the hospital. you and his mother on mother's

day and once when they took him off the ventilator. what were those days like for you and your children? >> well, it's kind of hard to put into words. i mean, it was pretty amazing to experience the ppe we had to wear. i had to tell people about that. we were sweating like dripping sweat because we had to be in this outfit from head to toe covered. it made me realize just how many sacrifices the health care workers are making while they are working shifts in those outfits. we played a lot of his favorite music for him on his ipad. one of the nurses in his unit had grown up in the same hometown he did, so she brought in an ipad that we had filled with all of his favorite music. so we played that for him. you know, he was surrounded by love in the hospital even though he was in intensive care and couldn't have visitors. we really hoped his organs could

be donated but he they were rejected because of covid-19. >> sometimes it takes until after someone's passing to hear about things you didn't even know about your own husband. as a police officer, a man who spent so much time helping people out in the community, i am sure you heard from hundreds of people. what did you learn about rob after his death that maybe you didn't even know about him? >> you know what? i think the biggest take a.i. wh away /* take away is what makes a person a hero is the little things he did in his day-to-day life that made him super special. i didn't know that at all when he was still living. he was really humble. he didn't come home and brag about all the things he did. i knew he had saved lives, he resuscitated people, apprehended people, but it came evident to me after he died and when he was still sick that he would sit with people at their kitchen tables during dark hours and say, you know, it's all going to be fine. he would comfort them with a

hand on their shoulder and a kind word. i have heard from honestly hundreds of people telling me a similar story to that. and it's just the small things that people can do in their own lives to make a difference in this world. and that's what i really believe. >> absolutely. alice, mike barnicle is here with a question for you. mike. >> alice, you have three children, two girls and a boy. 11th grade, 8th grade, both at home learning virtually every day. and your son is in the 5th grade and he wants to go to school. apparently, from what you wrote, he is going to school every day to see his friends, to maintain some contact with the life that he has. you are a teacher. you are not teaching right now and you wrote that you have no benefits fr benefits right now and you are not getting a salary right now. so my question to you, and i think it's probably on the minds

of a lot of people watching this, what's your day like? how are you making it with no salary, no benefits, and three kids? what's your day like? >> well, even though we hit terrible tragedy, i feel incredibly lucky, i am very blessed because i have a lot of good supports. there was a gofundme that raised money for us by a high school classmate. the tunnel to towers foundation is currently paying our mortgage which is incredibly helpful. i couldn't do this without that support. that was a race my husband ran a few times and we ran it with him once. but also because he was a first baptist i w-- a first responderi was awarded his pension line of duty benefits which happened in september which means i can get his benefits. i know this isn't the case if he was a teacher. i was with a widow who is

married to a principal and she got no such support. there has been acts passed to help support families like mean, and i am really grateful for those. my day goes by super fast. i can't believe how quickly the hours go by. i thought i would be sitting around idly, but that's not who i am. my son has an abbreviated day. he is over at 1:30 and he only goes to school every other day. >> so, alice, what is your message to voters? >> well, first of all, i think everyone should go out and vote, even if they don't think the candidate is perfect. i don't think we are going to get a perfect candidate ever. but i would hope people would choose love and kindness and empathy over hate and bigotry and disdain. and i think that's important for the kids i teach to know and my own children, that someone, a leader should lead by example

and not by mockery and disdain. i guess you could read between the lines there. >> oh, yeah. alice roberts, we wish you such courage and strength through this time. thank you very much. >> thank you. >> thank you for being on. >> thanks, alice. >> thank you. >> and still ahead, some florida voters are reportedly being sent threatening emails from the far-right group the proud boys. what those messages say about the upcoming election. we're back in a moment. ction. we're back in a moment woo! you are busy...

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. if i get nominated for three nobel prize prizes, different subject. and i told the story the other night. i was in florida or pennsylvania. i told our first lady, darling, we are going to have the greatest publicity i have ever had tonight. i got nominated for the nobel prize. do you know what that is darling? let's go home. so i leave for the first time in

a long time early. i get home. i turn on the television. they talked about your floods in iowa. they talked about how's iowa doing, the crops? how is this happening? how are they doing in florida? three, four, stories one after another. where is my nobel peace prize? they don't talk about it. i said, darling, this news is a little tough to crack. >> that was president trump last week complaining to a crowd in iowa that coverage of the historic flooding in the state and the hurricane overshadowed news of his nobel peace prize nominations. joining us now professor of history at tulane university who knows a thing or two about the nobel peace prize, walter isackson and associate professor of political science at fordham university and political editor at the grio.com christina fwreer. walter, complaining about his nomination not getting covered, also calling for joe biden to be

investigated by the attorney general. walter isackson, where do you want to start? >> well, he is totally unhinged. he was no way going to get the nobel peace prize than i was. it was ridiculous. the main thing is, he doesn't care about the people of iowa. he doesn't care about the people of the united states. and what you want in a president is somebody who is not thinking about himself all the time, but he is thinking about what can i do to help this country. and this is a person with no genuine empathy and all he does is go around saying maybe i should win the nobel peace prize. i mean, this is insane. we have got a reality tv clown show that has jumped the shark and the country needs a respite from it. >> complaining to a crowd in iowa about coverage of something central to their lives. the flooding and the crops there. professor grier, i want to ask you about early voting, which is going to play a big part of what we see on election day. began monday in florida.

366,000 voters went to the polls that day according to data collected by the united states elections project. the number shatters the first day of early voting four years ago when 291,000 people cast their ballots. this includes mail-in ballots, more than 3 million people now have voted in the state of florida already. early voting data shows registered democrats have been more likely to vote by mail in florida, whereas in-person voting was about equal among republicans and democrats on the first day. meanwhile, democratic voters in florida are being threatened reportedly from the far-right group the prout boys urging them to vote for president trump. residents of brevard county have received emails including voters' names and addresses in messages that read this way. quote, you will vote for trump on election day or welcome after you. change your party affiliation to republican to let us know you received our message and we'll comply. we will know which candidate you

voted for. i would take this seriously if i were you. according to florida today, the domain for the sender's email official proud boys.com baswas inactive by yesterday afternoon. it seems to have been previously affiliated with that group. there are public records available upon squ. voter intimidation is a federal offense subject up to one year imprisonment. professor grier, as you look at the long lines, let's start there, in florida, we have seen them all over the place, in the state of georgia, we have seen long lines, what do you see? on the first day some people said this is a disgrace. in america you should not wait for 12 hours to vote. i think we all agree on that. isn't it also a sign of enthusiasm? >> willie, i think some people look at those lines and they see enthusiasm and inspiration, which is great that people are exercising one of the most sacred rights we have as u.s. citizens. i have to say i am enraged when

i see predominantly black people and latinx people standing in line for hours and hours. it screams of voter suppression. it screams of deliberate attempts by state governments and secretaries of states and governors to make sure that people have a difficult time exercising one of the most sacred rights, especially in the middle of a pandemic. we know that many people have to get out of line. they have to go to work. even with early voting, which so many states have fought so hard to put into practice, it's still so difficult for someone to actually exercise one of their most basic rights as an american citizen. i try to feel inspired. i think so many people are exhausted by these past four years, the antics of the president, the corruption, the lies, the theft, the just disgrace that has come upon oval office, the disgrace of the republican party continues to show themselves every day that they behave this way and just

try to dissolve american ideals that we have been struggling to actually live up to for so long. so when i see the lines, i want to feel inspired, but i see it as a deliberate attempt to slow down the wheels of justice and it makes me quite sad. >> mike barnicle, you have a question for walter. >> walter, off of a lot of what christina just said, we hear every day and in other places every day and candidates every day running against trump point out and say this is not who we are. but the reality, walter, is, as you know, living down there in new orleans, as you know, the reality is that it might be who we are because trump never falls below 40% of the vote. he is always in between 40% and 45% of the vote. that means 40 to 45% of the

people are going to vote for donald j. trump. is it not the question on the ballot 13 days from now for americans to vote to finally come one an answer of this is who we are? >> you know, mike, you said this many times. it is a question about the soul of the nation. and we are going to find out, you know, because of early voting. my wife kathy and i were the first in line almost at the nba basketball arena here in new orleans. and i saw so many of my neighbors, so many friends come up and getting in line to vote and it made me sort of think god bless america. when they try to suppress the vote, it seems, i hope, to say to people, no, our most sacred right. we are going to do whatever we can to come out and vote. i think you're totally right. we are going to see a referendum not just on donald trump, but on

what is the american soul. what do we truly stand for? do we stand for democracy, the rule of law? do we stand for voting rights? and i'm pretty confident that watching the american people this time around it's like, okay, we need a break from this. >> christina, looking ahead to the debate tomorrow night, wondering what your thoughts are, especially the president's been attacking the moderator, kristen welker. it seems he has a real thing whenever a woman or an african-american woman, you know, has questions for him. he appears to behave really badly. thoughts, concerns about how the debate is going to be handled? >> right. well, the president's been priming the pump all week. we know he has an issue with african americans in positions of power. we know that he has a serious issue with women in power. so when you have an african-american woman in a

position of power we know the president is borderline apelectric. he is trying to insult her credenti credentials. but it's because the president knows that he is going to be on the defensive. his behavior in the first debate was abhorrent. he found that some of his supporters found it over the top and inappropriate as a sitting president. he is trying to figure out what the best strategy would be. we know that he is not big on policy or details. we know that joe biden has 40 some odd years of foreign policy experience and serving on various committees. this is his wheelhouse. joe biden does read. so this is a foreign policy debate where the president will sort of bluster through china. but i think per usual, the president wants to put out his own narrative to see if the media will run around and follow his narrative. it's working less and less closer to the election, the close of the election season on

november 3rd. so we see this desperation. but the attacks on an intelligent african-american woman are par for the course. we have seen this his entire career and most explicitly the last four years, which says so much about the leader we have right now in the oval office. going back to walter's point, i think some people want to know, is this our country? is this what we are showing our future generations? is this what we are looking at our spouses and our children and saying, you know, this is our leader, the man who cannot even be in a to room with a woman with some sort of intelligence, without insulting her, without taking to twitter. he is attacking lesley stahl, her colleague. this is a pattern everyone keeps asking, will young people save the day on election day? i think our elders will save the day. people thought we could look at democracy and pat ourselves on

the back. that is the wrong strategy, inappropriate strategy and it will not move this country forward. i think elderly people will say we are exhausted. we can't see our grandkids. we can't live our full lives. you think they will set an example for future an example for future generations to make sure we don't ever do this again as a nation. because we're at the brink of falling off the cliff with this particular president not just because of his corruption but because of his ineptitude. >> christina fwreer and walter isaacson, thank you both for being on this morning. up next, there are millions of americans living abroad who have the right to vote and want to participate in the upcoming election. we're going to take a look at a new initiative to make sure those voices are heard this november. keep it right here on "morning joe." election...

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hey, america. you live abroad. it must be nice at least now that trump is president. thanks to you if you didn't vote last time because you were abroad. there's over 6 million of you living abroad that are americans, and you can vote for god's sake. and there's a way to do that. you can register to vote. you go to votefromabroad.com. can you remember that? votefromabroad.com. 50% of you live in battleground states. only 7% of you voted last time. you don't have to live here with trump. i do. you could have been the

difference last time. [ laughter ] >> former senator al franken in an ad for the group votefromabody.com. joining us now is someone leading that effort, former u.s. ambassador to canada bruce hamen and u.s. ambassador to sweden under president obama, mika brzezinski. he served under president clinton as director of russian and eurasian affairs as well. bruce, i'll start with you. is there still time for those abroad to register to vote? or are we running out of time? >> for some number of states we've missed that deadline. but for a lot of states there is still a lot of time left. and a lot of swing states, too. look at texas. you've got till friday to get your federal ballot.

but for others the ballots have already been sent out and we need to get those ballots back. so if you haven't sent your ballot back, you need to do so right now. 30 states will allow you to email or fax them. but another 20 states you need to get that hard ballot back. and we're recommending that you use a courier service given the problems with the mail service. but that isn't over yet. once that ballot's in, you need to make sure it's accepted. and we're finding that in some cases, the signature didn't match with a recent case in florida. you need a plan and you need to put it forward. but votefromabroad.org or dot com, either one, get in there and register. again a lot of swing states. north carolina, you can go all the way to the end and return that ballot electronically. and we needle those votes. >> so, mark, how powerful and

plentiful is the vote abroad? is it just a few votes here and there around the world that could be coming in? because if the election is close, could the vote from abroad make a difference? >> mika, the vote from abroad could decide the election. take florida, a key battleground state. and many people say how florida goes, goes the country. florida ballots that live abroad, 200,000. and you and joe noted earlier in the show that the florida vote could be decided by 100,000 votes or less. so the implications are huge mika, the show that you and joe run has been a tremendous call to action, whether it's children in cages, mishandling of corona and the other troubles we see today. for americans living abroad, they see america in a macro perspective and can see how

badly things have been fumbled in foreign policy and domestic policy. whenever i travel abroad business overseas they say they love your show. go to votefromabroad.org and register to vote. get your ballot in. this is an initiative spearheaded by bruce and vickie heyman to dramatically increase voter participation by americans living abroad. >> so, bruce, you've got the number at 6.5 million americans living abroad, a total number there of which in 2016 only 7% voted in the election. why is that number so low? >> first of all, many americans living abroad don't realize that they can vote. they think that if they live outside the united states they can. the second reason is, well, they can but they don't know how. and the third is that they may go through the whole process, request the ballot, but they

never return it. or they return it late or in bad form. so this initiative which mark talked about is one that is a large group. we use ambassadors for biden, the biden campaign, incredible group, democrats abroad run by julia brian out of prague. but so many leaders across the world, we're all focused on getting and increasing the number of votes coming in from abroad. we're seeing huge increases in numbers. these numbers, like mark mentioned, are going through the roof. we think we could add a half a million to a million votes, and about half of them were swing state voters in 2016. so this could be a deciding mark, especially if they, like, michigan, had less than 11,000 votes. you may have that many people living in windsor, canada, right across the border.

>> thank you both, thank you for your service abroad for our country and for bringing us this message about voters abroad. appreciate it. mark, call you later. >> thank you. take care, guys. final thoughts mirng? we're a day away from the final presidential debate. but the president is racheting up. my worry is that as things get worse for him, he gets worse to deflect, and it hurts us. >> well, yeah. that's certainly the case. but it's been the case every day of his presidency, mika. i think walter isaacson got to one of the key points, and it's all these public people saying this is not who we are when trump does or says something. well, 13 days from now we're going to have the opportunity to indicate to the rest of the world, is this who we are right now or is what happens on

tuesday election day 13 days from now, do we define who we really are? >> and today begins a new chapter in the campaign as former president barack obama ste steps onto the stage campaigning in person now in philadelphia on behalf of joe biden. so president obama is now fully engaged with the campaign. >> we'll be watching for that. and that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is wednesday, october 21st. let's get smarter. we've got 13 days to go before election day, one day to go until the big debate, which still looks like the president's last best chance to shake up this race. that's especially true now that majority leader mitch mcconnell appears to be taking a new stimulus deal completely off the table, telling the white house not to accept one before election day. at the very same time, "politico" is reporting that instead of adding money to covid reef t