going to moderate the debate on thursday night. she represents the absolute best in fairness and accuracy in journalism and i know she's going to do a fantastic job with a very unpredictable situation in the debate tonight. so go, kristen. thank you guys for getting up "way too early" on this thursday morning. "morning joe" starters right now. look, i get that this president wants full credit for the economy he inherited. and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored. but you know what, the job doesn't work that way. tweeting at the television doesn't fix things. making stuff up doesn't make people's lives better. you've got to have a plan, you've got to put in the work. >> that pandemic is rounding the corner. they hate it when i say it. you know, you turn on to this

msdnc and fake news, all you hear is covid, covid, covid, covid, covid, covid. that's all they put on because they want to scare the hell out of everyone. and you know, the more testing you have the more cases. yeah, we have more testing than india and china and almost any other country put together. >> we literally left this white house a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. i used it to help prop -- eight months into the pandemic, cases are rising again across this country. donald trump isn't going to suddenly protect all of us. he can't take the basic steps to

protect himself. >> with covid, is there anything that you think you could have done differently? if you had a mulligan or a do-over on the way you handled it, what would it be? >> not much. it's all over the world. it's all over the world, it came out of china, china should have stopped it. they stopped it from spreading in to other parts of china after wuhan, but china should have stopped it. no, not much. i did it very early. >> just last night he complained up in erie that the pandemic made him go back to work. i'm quoting here. he was upset that the pandemic's made him go back to work. and if he'd been working the whole time it would have never gotten this bad. >> oh, my, good morning. welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, october 22. along with joe, willie and me we have historian and vanderbilt university professor jon meacham. politics and journalism

professor, and a msnbc political contributor, jason johnson. msnbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt is with us. >> willie, it was hard to imagine having two presidents any different than george w. bush and barack obama. but there you see the split screen of barack obama and donald trump and donald trump late into october, less than two weeks to go until the election, is still living in an age of magical thinking. where he is still saying that we're turning the corner, things are getting better. this while school systems are shutting down. outbreaks are raging across the midwest. things are getting worse. you talk to doctors, you talk to epidemiologists, the situation is getting worse. you had donald trump sitting there still acting like this is

a media hoax. you'll remember way back at the beginning when donald trump in february called this a media hoax? he's actually reverted back -- oh, by the way, all of the anti-anti-trump fools that have really been shamefully responsible for the continued support of this man by a lot of their people, a lot of the anti-anti-trump people said no, he wasn't calling it a hoax, he said the media was whipping it up in a frenzy, no, he called it a hoax. he's doing the same thing now suggesting that networks that cover the deadliest pandemic in over a century as it rages in to the fall are somehow part of this media hoax. he has learned absolutely nothing 220,000 deaths later. >> i had the same thought

watching that speech, if he made that speech in february it wouldn't have been much different than today. but the difference is there are now 223,360 deaths. the same way that the rallies could have been lifted out of 2016 with the lock her up and placed in to 2020, this speech looked like something from another time where we hadn't learned anything and where as you say, if you look at the map, cases are spiking across the country. that's not a matter of opinion. that's a matter of data. that's a matter of science. it's real, it's happening, it's not a hoax, so yes, we'll continue to talk about covid, covid. but you're right, there couldn't have been a bigger contrast unlike we haven't seen before of the last four years under president trump. >> yeah. it was quite something and, by the way, those cases around the country, there are small surge spots that will happen wherever this president has held his super spreader events.

dating back from tulsa one of the rallies that led to a spread in coronavirus. you know, state and local health officials have been watching the numbers when he holds a super spreader event, the numbers go up. so he's adding to it. as opposed to subtracting on these numbers, he's adding. we have a slew of new battleground state polling, in pennsylvania biden leads by ten points in the latest cnn/ssrs poll. by seven points in the latest "usa today" suffolk university poll. and by five in the new fox news poll. let's go to iowa. the latest monmouth poll puts biden up by three which falls within the margin of error. "the new york times" siena college poll has biden up three points. and the emerson college poll has trump up two points also within that margin.

in florida, both the latest cnn/ssrs and ipsos poll shows biden leading 50% to 46%. within the margin of errors. in michigan, biden is up by 12, 52% to 40%. in wisconsin, the fox news poll has biden up five points, 49% to 44%. in arizona, the latest reuters/ipsos poll has bide within a three-point lead, 49% to 46%, within the margin of error. in ohio, donald trump is ahead 48% to 45%. in texas, the latest quinnipiac university poll shows the two candidates tied at 47% apiece. that's a lot of different states to look at, joe. what do they tell you? >> well, what they tell us is what we have been thinking for

some time and that is that, again, willie, that donald trump is having real problems in the area where he was expecting to, you know, run to victory. in the upper midwest, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania where the states gave him obviously a shocking victory in 2016. but you look at pennsylvania plus 10, plus 8, plus 5. michigan, plus 12. wisconsin plus 12 there which is a little below what it usually is. even in iowa, two polls out yesterday showing that joe biden up by three points, that's of course a state that donald trump carried by nine. again, if this were any other candidate, if this were any other election cycle, we would be talking about the end for donald trump but of course it's not because there were a lot of polls that show donald trump doing poorly four years ago. the question is do the pollsters have it right this year and if

they do, even in the state of florida where these polls suggest he's down by four, i still think it's going to end up being a one-point race. if it's more than a one-point race either direction, then election night -- over the rest of the country this election is not going to be close. but you look right now, the numbers look very good for joe biden. but of course, the big asterisk is that the polls looked really good for hillary clinton at this point four years ago. >> yeah. but the problem for donald trump there's not a lot of time to change the dynamic of this race. there's tens of millions of mail-in votes that have been sent in. he has a debate tonight, is he going to convince a bunch of suburban women or seniors who

he's not who he's shown to be in the last four years. he doesn't have a lot of time, and as he does the rallies, it doesn't leave him a lot of room to grow. let's bring in national correspondent for nbc news and msnbc news, steve kornacki. as you put it together with your map, what are some of the scenarios you see playing out here? >> let's look at the road to 270. this is how things landed in 2016 of course trump with 306. but let's work off the poll numbers you were just going through right there because i think three states you were just talking about jump out, and in all three of the states, his margin was less than a point. it was a fraction of a point. of course these were also states that had not gone for a republican in three decades, since 1980s. these were narrow wins in traditionally democratic states and made all the difference and how important are the states for

trump? look at it this way. the polls, if wisconsin went to biden, if michigan went to biden, and if pennsylvania went to biden, those three states alone that trump won by the skin of his teeth in 2016 would put joe biden over the top and trump would be in a position, he could win florida and win carolina and win arizona, georgia, texas, iowa, everything else you mentioned he could sweep them. if he does not get one of those three midwest states that he flipped in 2016, he's under 270 and he doesn't win the election. the only thing he could do is pick off a state that hillary clinton won in 2016 but then you're in a world where he's losing these three states, but somehow winning minnesota. he's losing these three states but somehow getting new hampshire and nevada. it becomes implausible if he can't hang on to at least one of the battleground states and certainly his campaign has been treating pennsylvania with 20

electoral votes as their most likely target. if trump did find a way to hang on to pennsylvania, okay, now he'd back to 280. he has to defend florida and defend north carolina. he still would have a very, very small margin for error, but to stay in on election night, these three, he's got to find a way to win at least one. >> of course, steve, if he doesn't win florida, katie bar the door it's over. right now, there are two polls that came out showing joe biden up by four points. that's hard to believe. it's hard to believe, again, talking to the people that know this state better than everybody else. it's hard to believe this race is going to be decided by more than one percentage point. talk about florida and how actually the results that we get in -- because we are talking about weeks. we may be doing this for weeks and weeks and months and months. of course, the alternative to that is the fact that florida

could let us know by 9:00 p.m. on election night who's going to win in either direction. i remember in 2004 seeing the numbers come out of miami-dade, broward and palm beach county who republicans call the killing fields every four years. and i saw that george bush had far outperformed how he did in 2000 i said this is not going to be 2000, george bush is going to win florida fairly comfortably and win the rest of the country that way. talk about what we may know actually by 8:00 p.m. election night. >> yeah. that's the fascinating thing, joe, in florida, they were kind of doing covid style elections before covid. extensive mail-in voting, extensive early voting, getting them all tabulated and reported out quickly. i think we're in a situation in florida on election -- famous last words, of course, but once upon a time in 2004, it was a

disaster on election night but if nothing like that happen we're in a situation in florida where we'll get in first hour when polls close in the counties all of the early vote, all of the mail-in vote they have tabulated and the rest will come in fairly quickly. you can look at counties in florida, places around the gulf coast 8:30 in 2016 you can see that trump was running up the score compared to four years earlier and mitt romney and then you work your way up to north carolina, you saw it in the midwest. by 8:30, election night, 2016, you had a sense that the political world was changing because of florida. that could be the case again on election night in 2020. if biden were to get florida, and possibly get a result there on election night relatively early, that alone brings that

total from hillary clinton's 232 to 261. that's not enough for biden, but that puts him in situation where any one other state -- look i just said pennsylvania, but it could be michigan, any one other state with florida pretty much would put him over 270. so you have florida setting up as a state with a potential to get a lot of the vote in, to give us a readout and it kind of sets up as an early elimination contest for donald trump. he has to win it. we'll get florida and i think potentially north carolina in those early hours. a lot of carolina, at least. >> yeah. jason, as you look at all of the numbers that come flooding out of course yesterday, numbers that the trump campaign obviously is not pleased with, it's hard not to go back four years and say, well, hillary was ahead as well. the one thing that the biden people will say, even though

they are really actually about as paranoid as any group you have ever seen, they will not say they have a chance to even win this election. >> as they should. >> they will say this. the one thing that biden has that hillary never had was a huge collection of polls where he was over 50%. that is for anybody that's ever run that is the magic number when you're looking at polling. >> yeah. joe, so there's a couple things about the new poll numbers and i always tell people how to read polls. nobody is leading until somebody is averaging 49% to 50% of the vote. when hillary clinton was leading a lot of the states, 48 to 42, there were too many undecideds and undecides tend to -- you don't know where they'll go. sometimes they break for the opposition, sometimes for the incumbent. joe biden hasn't been leading --

he's averaging 51%, 54% of the vote and that's huge. the second thing is really key. i remember this a lot of the political scientists from four years ago. it's not the poll in 2016 were wrong, but we were paying attention to the national polls and not the state polls. after the comey letter, things were trending to hillary clinton and everyone thought this was background noise. all of the october surprises, they have always been about donald trump and the bad news has been about donald trump and we have seen bombs trend in favor of joe biden. the last thing is this, and this is important anecdotically. regardless of what we see in the press, regardless of what the national polls may say, you can tell how the race is going by looking at how members of the house and senate are behaving. if they start backing away in hillary clinton like we saw a little bit in 2016 that means they're -- okay, this could be bad.

what have we seen? ben sasse. we have seen more and more republicans come out and say, hey, by the way, i wasn't in favor of this thing that president trump was doing and this is in red states. internally you see the republicans being concerned about the numbers. it doesn't require propaganda from the white house and it's good that joe biden is not going to be complacent but this is a race barring something strange is trending towards joe biden in a state level and a national level. >> so jon meacham, we are 12 days out from the most important election of our lifetime. the final debate is tonight against the back drop of these polls, what are you expecting and what's on the line tonight in the biden/trump debate? >> well, you know, the traditional thing to say, this

is the last chance to change the narrative and to alter the dynamic of the race. but i think a lot of the analysis that we understandably offer is analog, you know, we're living in the political equivalent of climate change right now, right? extreme weather. it's man-made. our appetites, our ambitions helped create this climate. and i think the real story is in my sort of historical, dorky view, what is it about donald trump and his performance as president that's convinced 47% to 48% of the country that he should be president again? right? i'm not saying this as some sort of reflexive, crazy liberal, right? i live in tennessee. i voted for republicans. voted for democrats. you and i are talking in large

part because when i was a kid, ronald reagan captured my imagination as this figure of kind of dignity and grace and the presidency. and i'm george bush's biographer. this is not a reflexively partisan thing to say but 46.1% of the country voted for donald trump last time. and that number is up a little bit. that's the big story of the age is that, because the contrast -- i mean, what's going to be vivid on the stage tonight i think is you're going to have a bombastic, bullying, clearly out of his depth incumbent talking over and trying to bully both the moderator and the democratic nominee. and the democratic nominee is not outside the american mainstream. in many ways he is the mainstream. joe biden is a center left figure. if not a centrist figure.

you know, he's totally explicable and understandable in terms of new deal through obama politics. and that's great and that has its vices too. and one of the reasons that donald trump is president is because they found that to be income men sur rat to their era. and we don't need to go to the reality show berlitz classes to try to understand that. we understand what biden is saying and i was -- i was totally struck by -- i went around on social media yesterday. the video of joe biden greeting special needs son of a victim of the parkland shooting. mika, you sent it out too. >> yeah. >> watch that and answer a fundamental question.

watch that and then watch donald trump dismissing covid, covid, covid as we hit 225,000 deaths. and you tell me who do you want in charge of your affairs? >> yeah. >> really -- >> i saw the video and it's interesting, you can look at that video and i think most americans would agree that this election is between a good man and a bad man. >> yeah. >> and i -- i feel comfortable saying that donald trump is a bad man, jon meacham, because like you, i live in a very, very red area. you and i, 90% of the people that we see every day, are voting for donald trump. 90% of the people that we pass on the road every day are voting

for donald trump. and i have been politely and lovingly talking to my friends and my neighbors and my relatives and my loved ones asking why and they all say donald trump is a terrible man. he is a horrible example, not only to this country, a terrible example for our children. i would not want the man over at my house, but -- and then they start explaining their justification for a vote for this terrible man as they call him and it's either that joe biden is too old, he's going to be run -- his administration will be run by a secret cabal of socialists or communists or i saw something on facebook that says that -- then they go into extraordinarily disturbing theories. some will be blunt enough to say

it's about regulations. i think that joe biden will increase regulations on this country or my favorite, joe biden is not all mentally there. have they seen donald trump over the past four years? so you have all of these justifications and of course the painting of joe biden as some left-wing creature. when in fact joe biden's knock he was absolutely excoriated inside the democratic party for the past year and a half for being too conservative, for being too moderate, for not being progressive. so he's been attacked as a guy that -- i mean, hell, donald trump's attacking him for him being too tough on crime, for supporting the crime bill, for putting criminals in prison that's donald trump's attack, in black communities to joe biden, that he's too tough on criminals.

joe biden of course got attacked throughout his political career for being too close to banks, too close to credit card companies, we can go on and on. but at the end of the day, you are right, you are right. there is this -- there's a very clear choice between what type of person you want leading this country and a lot of our friends and a lot of our family members and 90% of the people that we see every day, jon meacham, are voting for a man who is right now trying to get his attorney general to arrest his political opponent with 12 days left. we need to stop right there. i'm going to say it again. >> yep. >> jon, what does it mean that your friends and my friends, some of your family members and some of my family members, the overwhelming majority of people that we see every day are voting

for a man willingly who 12 days out is trying to have his attorney general arrest his political opponent, a man who's leading him in the polls, and the son of his political opponent. what does that mean for where we are as a country right now, regardless of the outcome of this race? >> i think it means that it is the triumph of our worst instincts over our better angels because that -- because most of the 90%, what they would say is you are hyperventilating, he doesn't mean it, that's just the way he is. you know? trump's not serious. but because they believe and race has a lot to do with this too, and the role of -- the view of immigration, the rapidly

changing demography of the country. what they believe is they ultimately will be better off and more comfortable in a trump america than a biden america. and that i think is the existential and most troubling question. because i could not disagree more about that. and look at me, right? boringly heterosexual white southern male episcopalian. things tend to work out for me in this country. i'm supposed to be losing our hegemonic role in the culture, right? >> right. >> but i get it, i get enough to say, okay, look, people can -- disagree is the oxygen of democracy, right? jefferson said, the differences of opinion have shaped free government, and i'm not suggesting there's a 90% agreement test and wouldn't the

world be better off if they saw the world as i did. i'm not saying that. what i'm saying is at critical moments in the life of the country, we've had to make a decision, which is do you want to be the america of frederick douglas and abraham lincoln or do you want to be the america of jefferson davis and robert e. lee? that was the question of the 19th century. do you want to be the america of john lewis or do you want to be the america of bull connor? and those -- i know which side of history i want to be on and i think it's just as blunt a choice, just as sharp a choice today and even at our best, very quickly, even at our best, you know, we only get 60%, 65% of the country to agree on. 1964, 1972, 1984, 60% presidential elections. most of the time it's -- it's

55-45. it's not 45 or 46 and that's what's troubling is why -- why can't enough of us assess the evidence and answer with a full heart as opposed to worries about our identity and our wallet? >> it's well said and you have to add into the conversation as well the information filters where people are getting the information, from facebook. if you watch donald trump's speech and you get all your information from those places, it all makes sense. the hunter biden story makes sense. everything that donald trump tells you is fitting into the narrative that you've been led to believe is true. if you watch it from where we are sitting it's factually untrue. steve kornacki, we have been looking at the big picture, what

may happen on election night. of course there's a lot of concern that we have heard about this could go on for days or weeks as they count the mail-in voting and in pennsylvania, the supreme court upheld a ruling they can count mail-in votes up to three days after election day. so what are some of the states you'll be looking at in terms of what we will know on election night and what we won't know until hours or days later? >> yeah, it's going to vary, i mean 7:00 p.m. eastern you're basically going to get all of florida except the panhandle is going to start reporting in. we could get a lot there in florida early on and as the night progresses you can say we can get a full result out of florida. south carolina, a lot like florida in terms of good potential here to get a lot of the vote in florida. in florida, the ballots can come in a few days after the election if they're postmarked. i don't think that's going to be a ton of ballots but that might affect for the reality of the race being called but you'll get a ton of vote out of north carolina. another one, georgia had a mess

in the primary. 7:00 p.m., the polls will close in georgia. it is possible i'd say, we'll see, it's possible we'll get more out of georgia. a better readout than we're expecting based on the primary. another one that will start coming in, maybe 8:00, closer to 9:00 for all practical purposes, texas. remember, texas is a state not doing extensive mail-in voting and texas with the long history of early voting. i think we will get a lot of the result out of texas and again it can at least point you -- even if the result statewide is very close, that alone could be a clue about broader trends happening nationally. ohio we might get something out. pennsylvania, michigan. by the way, 6:00 p.m., we'll get first poll closings in indiana. we're not talking about indiana as a battleground state, but one

of the things we're asking about the whole blue wave shift, metropolitan areas that you saw in 2018 starting to break away from trump, there's some indications in the polling that that's continued and maybe accelerated in to 2020. we'll look around indianapolis, as the polls close at 6:00 p.m. hour, are we getting an early indication of the suburbs the suburbs around indianapolis that stuck with trump in 2016 is that movement there? if you see big movement around indianapolis at that 6:00 p.m. hour, that might be portending something too. that could be the first thing i'm looking at. >> and kasie hunt, with the narrative that joe laid out, the back drop of a president 13 days before election day urging his attorney general to arrest his opponent in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of an

economy in a free-fall, who are the republicans who are pulling away and some might ask why aren't there more? >> well, mika, i think truly that -- i was reflecting on this as i was listening to jon meacham talk about what it means in the context of history. i think there are some republicans who are starting to realize thank you history is taking a turn away from the place that they have been for the last four years. now, you know, ben sasse is someone who thinks about politics and the country in those types of sweeping terms. he did not come out in public and say in a straight forward way any of the things that were on that leaked audiotape. which says that there's still fear among republicans about crossing this president. they are not coming out and

shouting this from the mountain tops or from the rooftops and i think, you know, we have covered the way that they have approached this and their critics call them cowards for it. john cornyn is another one and there are some signs for me that that race in texas which is not one that has been at the top of anybody's list as a potential flip from republican to democrat, but he told a newspaper in the last week or so that he privately broke with president trump on issues like the deficit and the border wall. he just thought the better way to deal with it is to do it behind the scenes, to do it privately. that tells me that there is in eye toward what could be and we are all afraid to say it, we are so shell-shocked still by what happened in 2016 that we're looking at the numbers and nobody wants to say this looks like a landslide for joe biden. the biden campaign as joe said at the very top of the show probably the most paranoid of anyone about potentially doing

this, but there are these signs that this rejection is in the offing and if it's what happens, it's going to leave a lot of the republicans how are they going to answer the questions about where they were for the last four years if that happens. they have sent out to the wilderness anyone who has rejected trump. jeff flake, bob corker, they don't have a home anymore and i think that realignment is a real reckoning and they have to answer to history, frankly. >> i mean, mika, you think about it. think about mark sanford and sanford survived an excruciating personal controversy and he survived it by going around his district and apologizing to people one by one and they forgave him and elected him to congress. >> geez. >> but then they threw him out

because he only voted with donald trump 90% of the time. >> yeah. >> so why aren't -- >> got to make a choice. mitt romney said he did not vote for trump but won't say who he voted for though. >> the question is, what is the upside for these republicans now? whatever they say it will not be enough. >> what could he do to them? >> what is the upside by being remembered as being the people that abandoned donald trump in the last 12 days of a four-year term, when they should have actually distanced themselves a long time ago. they may be seeing no upside in it. if donald trump is defeated, if these polls are accurate, then that's actually when the questions start for the republican party. will they speak out strongly for a peaceful transfer of power?

if donald trump does not -- does not support a peaceful transfer of power, if he's trying to call the process rigged, will these republican officials stand up and speak out for democracy or will they continue to hide cravenly in donald trump's shadow? that's actually going to be the real test, the test that matters. still ahead, u.s. officials say russia and iran have obtained u.s. voter registration data that -- and that iran used the information to intimidate democratic voters. nbc's ken dilanian joins us with his new reporting. and later, house speaker nancy pelosi will be our guest as she works with the trump administration on a covid relief bill. and tonight, joe, willie and i will be leading debate coverage on peacock. nbcuniversal's free streaming app. we'll be joined by bob woodward who's had those revealing

interviews with the president, plus nbc's john heilemann, member of the "new york times" editorial board norah guy and michael beschloss. it kicks off at 8:45 eastern. >> you can stream it on your phone, on your ipad. or you can go to the apple app store and download it on your tv. >> kind of exciting. where else would we be? we'll be right back with much more "morning joe." rning joe. we made usaa insurance for members like martin.

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>> this data can be used to attempt to community false information to registered voters that they hope will cause confusion, sow chaos and undermine your confidence in american democracy. to that end, we have already seen iran sending spoofed emails designed to intimidate voters, incite social unrest and damage president trump. >> damage president trump. >> that last line was just a little bit off. >> what was that? the director of the national donald trump campaign. did the head of the d&i say that? >> he's scared of his boss. he had to make it in a way that the boss liked because these were -- >> the director of national intelligence -- >> a joke. >> is actually using a press conference to try to promote

donald trump? >> he's a joke. >> he is a joke. in the briefing -- >> what a disgrace -- what a disgraceful way to act when you are entrusted with such a position. by the way, that's the sort of thing that stays with somebody the rest of his lives and he's doing that for 12, 13 more days? talk about playing the short game. it's just -- >> he's not a serious man. >> no. he's not. >> the director of the fbi, christopher wray, sought to reassure voters and the election and praised the great work of the law enforcement agencies who stopped an attempt by america's adversaries to underline the elections. and meanwhile, a cyber security company said it found a hacker selling the voter registration data of 186 million americans, underscoring how vulnerable americans are to email targeting by criminal and foreign

adversaries. let's bring in nbc news correspondent covering national security and intelligence ken dilanian. so ken, explain why it was so important to have this press conference. it's very close to the election. it was in the evening, kind of felt like it came out of the blue. and why that matters that they actually decided to do it this close to the election and also the point that ratcliffe made about these emails hurting trump. what the heck is going on there? is he lying, could he be wrong? >> look, i'll tell you what a senior u.s. intelligence official told me last night. here's the theory behind why they think this could hurt trump. if it's believed that a white nationalist group is sending emails threatening democrats voters saying vote for trump or else or we'll get you, that is perceived as harming donald trump's reputation. so that's the theory behind this. and it is true the u.s. intelligence has shown there are

elements of the iranian element would like to see trump defeated because he's put extra sanctions on them. and i have sources on the senate intelligence, they didn't have a problem with what ratcliffe said, that was their understanding as well. this underscores how different it is in 2020 than it was in 2016 in terms of the sensitivity to any hint of foreign election interference. this campaign wasn't that impactful, didn't reach that many voters, but they found out about it only -- the intelligence community only started to grapple with this early yesterday i'm told but they wanted to alert the public in part to send a message to iran, we know you're doing this and stop and to put the russians on notice, you know, they know that the russians have voter registration information and could do a similar thing on a larger scale at any time really. but, you know, in 2016, the

government was very hesitant to talk about what it knew about foreign election interference and now get it out and let the public understand it because the threat isn't tampering with the vote. the threat is disinformation, misinformation, undermining confidence in the election and the real worry is if there's a disputed election because the opportunity for this misinformation is so great by foreign adversaries and cyber criminals. >> so ken, there are reports that the president's growing increasingly frustrated with christopher wray as well as even attorney general barr and is thinking of dismissing them after the election. what have you heard? >> well t tea leaves have been clear that trump has no patience for christopher wray and he's

been saying things that are at odds with donald trump's world view. talking about the threat from the white supremacists, he talks about russian election interference and donald trump is not happy that the fbi is not uncovering derogatory information about his political opponents and even william barr reached the limits of how he can stretch american justice to help donald trump when donald trump is calling on him to indict obama and clinton and to issue a report in the last days of the election, you know, saying that there's an investigation into corruption by joe biden when there isn't one. even barr can't do that and so trump has lost patience with barr. you know, it will be interesting to see what happens because there's widespread belief that joe biden if he's elected would keep chris wray on as the fbi director. he serves a ten-year term, is supposed to be somewhat independent from the president. if wray is fired in the post election period, assuming biden

is elected, it would allow him to choose his own person, but it would mean chaos for the fbi which has seen a lot. >> ken dilanian, meanwhile, the peacock plush toy over his shoulder is available at the store. let me go to you, the email which was alleged to have been from the proud boys and that's why we paid attention to the press conference and christopher wray was there and he's managed to keep his job and his integrity, but john ratcliffe, he's been on fox news, pushing the hunter biden story, the laptop. job one appears to be please the boss like so many others in this administration. >> yeah. and a big change as we have been talking about in 2016 and now is

the lack of faith that the public has in the officials. think about it. we're 13 days from the election and we have national security officials saying hey, iran is involved and most people don't believe it, they don't trust is this administration and after everything we have seen to hear the scooby-doo result, aha, it was the iranians all the time, like nobody falls for it. why of all the things that iran could do to impact the election why would they do something so specific and granular as to come up with fake emails from the proud boys. even when a threat to our national voting integrity is presented by the federal government, most people don't believe it because they have heard so many lies from this administration that all seemed to supposedly favor the president. >> yeah. so much going on in social media. let's bring in the u.s. national editor at "the financial times"

ed luce whose new column argues why foreign policy may where the case for re-electing trump. okay. ed, make it. because it seems like he's got some challenges on the world stage. >> he has and just to be clear, he isn't making this case himself. but i thought it was a useful challenge to ask what would be the best case for re-electing donald trump, notwithstanding the fact that i don't believe he should be re-elected and that case is almost entirely on foreign policy. if you look at his promises kept check list which he's obsessed with at rallies and on social media. most of the checks are on the foreign policy side. so in 2016 he promised not to start any new wars which he hasn't. he said he would defeat isis, isis apparently has lost its territory. baghdadi, the leader, was killed

in a commando raid. he said he'd get allies to spend more on defense. after years of requesting europeans nicely to spend more on defense, previous administrations had very little luck. he's had slightly more luck. he's forced the europeans to debate about a european arrangement. and you have got of course donald trump identifying china as a strategic threat. now, you might disagree with any or all of these foreign policy priorities, or the way he's gone about them. i do. but if you want to make the case for trump, it is that trump is the alternative to what ben rhodes, the senior obama official said is the foreign policy establishment and that

trump made vows that by and large he has stuck to, which is a very odd sentence to have coming out of my mouth. just to emphasize though, he isn't making this case. even though his team are arguing for more time tonight at tonight's debate to be devoted to foreign policy. >> so, ed, if donald trump were to lose, are there elements of his foreign policy that -- let's say our european allies or others around the world would want joe biden to continue? >> well, that's a good question. there are a couple of points here where trump goes against what we think about him. so clearly he envies and admires vladimir putin and other autocrats, but he has been beating germany around the head

for this pipeline from russia and angela merkel has been billing and i think it will give russia the greatest leverage and the way he makes the critique isn't much good and others in europe quietly agree with it. he's pulling troops from afghanistan. i think 19 years after america went in with no better results than from the beginning it's not unreasonable to say what is it we're going to achieve with another few years? i mean, it's the longest war ever that hasn't already been achieved which is not that much. h.r. mcmaster, trump's former national security adviser compared trump's decision to withdraw from afghanistan to munich and the appeasement of

hitler and it was that kind of overwrought analogy that prompted ben rhodes to define the blog as what it is. so my personal view, donald trump is an existential threat to american democracy and i very much hope he loses and i think he will lose. but his defeat will be a return of the blog and that's -- that's not an unmixed blessing. if you look at america's foreign policy record over the last 20 years. we should be aware of that and debating. >> ed luce, thank you so much. we'll be reading the new column in the financial times. coming up, president trump and joe biden are set to face off for the final debate. jonathan lemire joins us with the latest reporting on that. plus, james carville will be our guest. "morning joe" will be right back. guest. orning joe" will be right back

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we cannot leave any doubt in this election because you know he -- the president's already said if it's even close, i'm going to just take stuff up. he's already started to do it. so we can't have any doubt. we can't be complacent. i don't care about the polls. there were a whole bunch of polls last time, didn't work out. because a whole bunch of folks stayed at home. and got lazy and complacent. not this time. not in this election. not this time. >> and got lazy. >> i love it. welcome back to "morning joe." it's thursday -- >> yesterday, mika, we were watching -- >> she was so funny. >> "the new york times" editorial page -- she'll be with us, by the way, on the peacock coverage for the debate, before and after the debate.

but she said, she said how delicious it was to have the first black man elected president calling donald trump lazy. >> later in his speech, that was funny. it's thursday, october 22, along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc contributor mike barnicle. white house correspondent for pbs news hour yamiche alcindor. white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire, and democratic strat and the host of 2020 strategist of war room podcast, james carville who's -- >> go ahead. >> the lsu shirt is in better lighting than he is. but i understand. it's a thing with him. >> let's start with jonathan lemire. hey, jonathan, so take us through the last 24 hours with the president and tell us how he's preparing for the debate tonight. >> very little in the way of

preparation. >> he's frozen. >> aides -- am i frozen? >> now you're good. >> not anymore. you look great now. you're good. >> thank you. i have lighting. i have better lighting than james, at least. >> yes. >> the president has done very little in the way of preparation in the last couple of days. he's eschewed former debate prep. there's been some time carved out on the schedule but he's not largely done that. aides have urged him -- they have urged him in recent days to try to take a wait for it new tone, try to take a different approach than the last debate. try to let joe biden to talk more to let joe biden thinking the more biden talks -- because of a verbal gaffe and if he believes if he outlines his policies on raising taxes that the americans won't like that.

>> all right. we're having some problems with the feed. we're going to try to get it back. james carville, so right now, we have gone through -- let's run through some polls real quick that we went through last hour and get your read on it. pennsylvania, you've got joe biden up by ten points. another poll has him up by eight polls. another poll by seven points. fox news has him up by five points. "new york times" poll has biden up by two, and in florida, both the latest cnn and reuters poll shows biden up by four points and in michigan the fox news poll has biden up by 12. 52% to 40%. in wisconsin, the fox news poll has biden up by five points and in arizona, the latest reuters poll has biden up which a

three-point lead. and in ohio, donald trump is up by three points and in texas, q poll has it tied. you know, james, that every democrat across america -- they're usually paranoid anyway about election results, expecting republicans to figure out how they're going to steal an election from them. this year, they're especially paranoid, but i remember before the election in 2016, you were quietly warning people that would listen that that race was not locked up. i'm curious what your thoughts are four years later looking at these polls. >> yeah, going on what president obama said. we have to win by more than five and that's no jive. the thing gets -- anything close, it will be stolen from him. that's a fact. the courts, the federal courts are completely stacked in the republicans' favor. he will do anything he can.

so yet, do i think we'll quote win, yes. but the idea here -- and no democrat can remotely have any complacency because we have to win by a lot. now we have a chance to do that. but here in the next -- little less than two week we was to close that deal. we're starting to close it now, if you look at the early vote numbers but i mean, no moment -- i'm optimistic but the last thing i am is complacent in this. and there are sufficient number of republican identifiers that would tell you that there's some likelihood that this could close. i don't know that it will, but i think president obama was right on the money in his remarks we just heard here. i really do. >> hey, james, it's willie. we have some new polls coming in from morning consult. shea though biden up by 16 in colorado, up 9 in pennsylvania and up 12 in wisconsin. those came off the presses.

>> geez. >> you told me a couple years ago when we were talking about the 2016 campaign that you were tired of hearing about people's algorithms, the machines that would tell them what was going to happen and you indicated that you have your own algorithm. what is your james carville algorithm telling you? >> i think americans are sick of living like this. i really do. i think what trump has done the whole campaign is the best thing he could do for biden or the country, he's made it all about him. and, you know, it's the economy, stupid, or it's about this, and what donald trump has successfully done is put right at the center of this election and made the election totally about him. and so it's kind of weird. i have never seen a more

personality centric election in he life, particularly in the middle of a recession, a pandemic. but the number one issue in america is not coronavirus, it's not the any, it's not foreign policy, or anything like that. prescription drug costs. the one issue is the campaign, donald trump. and that's what people are voting against and voting for. and he has some instinct that his base will come out and support him and i think that he's correct on that instinct. i think it will be a high turnout in these kind of trumpy areas, but what we saw in 2018 was when we had swing voters and you had the enormous shift in the suburbs. i do think that there's sufficient evidence to say that his -- we're cutting into his base. it will support him, it will support him strongly, but it will no be as overwhelming as it was in 2016 and i think that's a key factor in this election.

but again, i say look at these polls for what you want. if you want to get rid of donald trump, you don't just have to beat him, you literally have to annihilate him. you have to beat him by more than five points in order to ensure that we have a smooth transition of power and we can get back to the -- get our lives back. because without that, it will continue to beat us. >> so yamiche, again, going over the new polls that just broke from morning consult, you've got joe biden up seven in michigan, nine -- he's up nine in minnesota. up three in north carolina. donald trump up two in ohio. joe biden up nine in pennsylvania. donald trump up seven in south carolina. texas, tied again. how many polls have we seen out of texas and georgia that are tied? and then wisconsin has joe biden up by 12 points. the president obviously knows that politically his back's up

against the wall. what are you hearing about his plans for tonight and his plans for the last 12 days of this campaign? >> well, i want to say, first, that the sentiment that you're hearing from both james carville and president obama is that the polls are important but it's not something that guarantees anything to the democrats and that democrats really need to win by a landslide, it's something that i have heard over and over again. i came back from florida, talking with donald trump and biden supporters and all of them were telling me, i'm not sure how i feel about the polls. i'm not sure what they actually mean. when you get to the actual president and the trump campaign, they say about the same thing except they're a little bit more sober than the voters. they say essentially that we have to go out there and really campaign that's why you're seeing president trump rallying and crisscross across the country and making that case and that's why you saw him complaining about going to erie, pennsylvania, look, i didn't think i'd have to come here, but

here i am. that is president trump saying i didn't realize i'd be in this race, i didn't think things would be this tight. when it comes to tonight, we should expect to see an aggressive donald trump who doing the same thing that he was doing in the first debate. yes, there are aides who want to see a change in tone and donald trump turn into someone new and focus on the economy and policies and really try to focus in on making coherent arguments against joe biden and prosecuting the case against joe biden and hunter biden. what's making that tougher for president trump, we have the new reporting coming out showing that president trump allegedly has the china bank account that blows up his beijing biden argument. we'll see the president in some ways really for the first time talking about what president obama said to him. we know that president obama is someone who gets under president trump's skin like no one else. and now he's going to be on the

debate with president obama's words about him being a liar, about not him being a decent person, bungling the virus. he'll have that in the back of his mind as he's really seething and angry at joe biden. >> so you mentioned china and president obama and here is president obama yesterday talking about trump's connections to china and just gob smacked over the president putting out so many different conspiracy theories. >> this was just reported in the last 48 hours. we know he continues to do business with china because he's got a secret chinese bank account. how is that possible? how is that possible? a secret chinese bank account. listen, can you imagine if i had a secret chinese bank account when i was running for re-election?

you think -- you think -- you think fox news might have been a little concerned about that? they would have called me beijing barry. and with joe and kamala at the helm, you're not going to have to think about the crazy things they said every day. and that's worth a lot. you're not going have to argue about them every day. it just won't be so exhausting. you can might be able to have a thanksgiving dinner without having an argument. you'll be able to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories. about secret cabals running the world or that maybe s.e.a.l.s. didn't actually kill bin laden. think about that. the president of the united states retweeted that. imagine, what -- what?

we're not going to have a president that goes out of his way to insult anybody who doesn't support him. or threaten them with jail. that's not normal presidential behavior. we wouldn't tolerate it from a high school principal. we wouldn't tolerate it from a coach. we wouldn't tolerate it from a coworker. we wouldn't tolerate it in our own family except for maybe crazy uncle somewhere, you know -- yeah. i mean, why would we expect and accept this from the president of the united states? >> it is a question that bears repeating every single day. >> absolutely. >> if a junior high football coach would be fired for saying just one thing that donald trump

says every day, or if a ceo would have been driven off the board immediately for behaving like donald trump behaves every day, why do 48% of americans -- why do 47% of americans actually continue to want this man to represent the united states of america? at home and across the world. it's crazy. mika, interesting looking at donald trump's twitter account. >> oh. >> his phone has obviously been seized by staff members because no tweeting about barack obama and listen to how well the president -- the radical biden/harris agenda is projected to slash the typical american's income by $6,500 a year. they will raise taxes by $4 trillion, triggering a mass exodus of jobs out of america and into foreign countries. if i do not sound like a

typical -- this is donald trump -- >> if i do not sound like donald trump -- >> we're supposed to believe that donald trump is tweeting this. they have taken his phone away from him. if i do not sound like a typical washington politician it is because i'm not a politician. if i do not always play by the rules of the washington establishment, it's because i was elected to fight for you harder than anyone ever has before. and you can keep going through this. they have seized his phone, mika, and obviously they think the only way donald trump can save himself is to be put -- he's not john travolta, the boy in the plastic bubble. he is now donald trump the politician in the plastic bubble. they have seized his phone from him and they're hoping that he can take the high road and not tweet about barack obama who i

have got to say, holy cow, mika, barack obama just made the president look so foolish yesterday. i know that had to be very painful for him to watch and not be able to repeat back or tweet back, strike back at him. because his staff grabbed the phone from him. they're not letting him tweet now. they have complete control over his phone. >> well, it's a good idea because his tweets are so self-directive. >> good idea. i guess they have to protect him from himself. >> a little bit. mike barnicle, so the question that meacham posed towards the beginning of the show, what has donald trump done to be re-elected? is that the question that joe biden needs to put to the american people in the debate or what's on the line for joe biden? maybe stay out of his way and let him talk? >> boy, mika, that's a big question that you just raised referencing what meacham was saying earlier.

it's critical that it will be answered, it's critical that joe biden if he's elected, i think he will be elected, he has to respond it to. we have seen over the course of this campaign a number of democratic officials and democratic candidates for offices at every level refer to something that donald trump has said or something that donald trump did and that's on a daily basis, multiple times a day sometimes. and the reference this is not who we are. but really? this is who we are in a sense when you have 45, 46% of the american voting population voting for donald trump. and how could you vote for donald trump if you see how he behaves, if you see what kind of a human being he has been and how he has reacted to people and how he's been focusing on cruelty, separating children from their parents, and all of the children who can't find

their parents today. things like that. the viciousness of his campaign. and yet, still, 45%, 46% of people are going to vote for donald trump apparently, we're going to find out. that has to be -- that has to be answered. they have to be dealt with. now, you've got to assume of the 46% maybe only 25% to 30% are part of a cult a trump cult. so this 15% or 16% of americans who are voting for this guy, their grievances have to be addressed that's going to be a critical issue for the biden people. why are they voting for this man? what angers them, what frustrates them and in doing that i think it will be a positive thing for the entire country because boy, james carville was so right. this country is exhausted. we want our lives back. at least i want my life back. >> there's what president obama got to in his speech. he talked about the exhaustion

which so many americans feel. i think we have jonathan lemire's wi-fi back. jonathan, i think the wi-fi went down because even it rolled its eyes back in the head because you said that donald trump will change his tone tonight. how many times have we heard that? is there some semblance of a strategy? what is the closing argument, like the media is covering covid-19 too much as we race toward 224,000 deaths and that the cdc warns yesterday it is only getting worse headed into the fall and winter. what's the path to victory here? >> yeah, maybe what i just went through was the debate commission trying out the mute button for tonight. >> there you go. >> the president -- it's laughable and the president himself has told aides according to my reporting that he's make nothing promises. that he's not going to say that he's going change his tone or

interrupt any less. even though advisers told him in the aftermath of the first debate before his covid-19 diagnosis that that was the wrong strategy, let biden talk more. to not just perhaps stumble, but also to -- you know, talk more about his policies that are out of step for a lot of americans. he did deliver his closing argument on the economy but it's being -- he hasn't been disciplined at the rallies or the other remarks and we should anticipate tonight a full on onslaught about hunter biden and the recent unproven allegations that have ended -- and the laptop that appears to have ended up in the hands of rudy giuliani. that he's expected to go there again tonight in part to try to in their view expose misdeeds but also to try to rattle joe

biden on stage and make him lose his temper. but republican strategists they said this isn't working that the hunter biden issue doesn't have traction with the voters. in the first debate trump came off as mean when he made the personal attacks that turned off a lot of voters so they have no confidence however that he'll be able to deliver any sort of restraint up there tonight. they recognize as a final point that they're of course running out of time. this is the last time, potentially as a political figure that president trump will have a free opportunity to make his case for another four years and they recognize that he is down, close, but down in most of the battleground states he needs. so it's an extraordinary amount of pressure tonight for trump and his aides quite frankly don't know how he'll respond. >> thank you. james carville, 12 days left. you have been through a lot of these campaigns.

tell us, how does joe biden spend the last 12 days? what should they be doing? >> i think they have done well so far. i think tonight is going to be obviously a -- make the closing argument but i think he has to trust the american people. i saw a story about them -- everybody was saying we won't get enough poll watchers. everybody knows you go to poll and there's an onslaught of young people doing this in the middle of the pandemic. i think what trump has done, he's gotten americans not to trust each other. i think -- i'm hoping that on election night when we see what i hope happens americans go back to trusting each other again. that we do have some common vision in this country and it's -- as barnicle pointed out,

he's going to get people to vote for him, but if it's a sufficient number of people who vote for joe biden i think the country can make a very important statement by itself. i think it has to do that. and, you know, this sounds like a small data point, not particularly strategic, but when i see young people volunteering to be poll watchers to work election day in what according to the story was an unprecedented number, i think america's going to have a good night election night. i really do. and this country needs it. we need to feel good about ourselves. we need to feel good about our country. we need to feel good about our future. right now, we just don't have license to do that. and i think that's -- that's at the heart of this election. >> james, what state are you going to be looking at on election night? what's the state that's going to tell the tale for you? >> georgia. i'm so into georgia. you know, i was born in ft. benni benning. i have a lot of good friends

there. i'm a southerner, and georgia is the most prominent -- you know, louisiana and florida, but kind of georgia is the crown of the jewel in the south. and i think it represents so much. i think we have a real, real shot in georgia. georgia has been -- particularly gwinnett county. that's going to be on my dashboard election night. one of the things to be watching closely. and, you know, it's really -- it's happening now, trying to suppress the people from voting and when you see all of the people in lines and standing up and standing up for america, i think georgia has a really good chance to help mike barnicle and i feel good about america. >> all right, james carville, thank you very much. we'll be talking to you again very soon. >> lsu -- [ indiscernible ].

>> you have done good. >> strategic lighting. house speaker nancy pelosi will be our guest as she works with the trump administration to reach a deal on covid relief. and we'll talk to a key player from a key swing state. the attorney general of pennsylvania joins us to discuss how he's preparing for the legal battle that will likely follow the election. you're watching "morning joe." we will be right back. u're watc" we will be rhtig back. - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven. make family-sized meals fast. and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away. with priceline, you can get up to 60% off amazing hotels.

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travel here. then he cut the event short. poor guy. i don't feel that way.

i love coming to pennsylvania. you guys delivered for me twice and i am back here tonight to ask you to deliver the white house for joe biden and kamala harris. >> more there of former president obama laying in to president trump yesterday in pennsylvania. earlier in the week, we told you about a ruling by the supreme court that will allow mail-in ballots to be counted in pennsylvania if received within three days of election day. it's likely not going to be the last legal challenge surrounding this election in that state. joining us now is the attorney general of pennsylvania, josh shapiro. also with us is former senior adviser for the house oversight committee, kurt badella. so attorney general josh shapiro, what legal battles do

you predict post election and at least the ruling that the supreme court handed down here gives some order to what appears to be a very high turnout. >> well, look, mika, good to be with you. it's hard to predict what this president will do. he and his enablers and his legal team have been incredibly erratic. what we know is they have attacked our voting laws here in pennsylvania. they have made it -- tried to make it harder for people to vote. they have tried to make it easier to intimidate voters particularly in our black and brown communities. they have alleged fraud where there isn't any, they have spun the ridiculous conspiracy theories and as a result, they have gone 0 for 3 here and we beat them at every turn. and i can assure the people of pennsylvania as i have many times and certainly the american people we're prepared for whatever comes next. whether it's actions on election

day or actions to discard or dismiss ballots once the polls close. we'll be ready. the president loves to tweet and make up a lot of nonsense, but in a court of law we deal with facts and evidence and so far the president has zero to back up his ridiculous claims and that's why he keeps losing in court. >> mr. attorney general, it's willie geist. as you say, president trump is trying to muddy the waters, talking about ballots being found in creeks, all of them have been debunked. being stolen. how much voter fraud do you see and how much should you expect with mail-in ballots, for example? >> well, look, trump's own fbi has talked about how there's a minuscule amount of voter fraud and listen, i prosecuted people for voter fraud but not the kind of stuff that donald trump is allegi alleging. the basis for one of the federal suits he filed our vote by mail statute is rife with fraud and i

said, hey, mr. president, put up or shut up. demonstrate the fraud and the judge said, you don't have to demonstrate actual fraud, just the possibility that fraud could exist. it's a relatively low evidentiary bar and he could don't that and the judge dismissed the case. he's spun the tales he has never been able to back up in court, but here's the deal. he's doing it for a specific reason. you used the word muddy the water. i think he's trying to create chaos because what he's trying do, willie, make the voters here feel powerless, to make them feel like they won't control the outcome of this election. but here's the deal. in our democracy and here in pennsylvania, the people are the ones with the power. not donald trump. and the people will be the ones to determine the outcome of this election. based upon what i see, i don't think they're going to choose donald trump which is why they're working overtime to do

everything in his power to make sure not all eligible votes will be counted and why we're working extra overtime to make sure he's defeated in court and we'll continue to do that so long as he brings the ridiculous lawsuits. >> and what you see in the early returns on election night may not be believable from where he's sitting. in other words, you will see a number, perhaps that shows joe biden with an advantage in the state of pennsylvania, but don't believe that, and if the count goes on into subsequent days that gives him more air and more space to make that claim that something fishy is going on. so we have been trying to help our viewers know what to expect on election night. so what should in the state of viewer, what should we expect to see in pennsylvania on election night? >> well, so we're going to count ballots as follows. we are going to count the precincts and the precinct totals that is the people that vote on election day seem to be

running at about, you know, 55% of the overall electorate. then about 45% of the overall electorate is going to vote by mail and those ballots will take a little bit longer to be counted. but understand that voters who are voting by mail are overwhelmingly democrats. seemingly it's running ago 70% of those vote by mail ballots are democrats. you're going to be able to go on our department of state website, you'll be able to click on a particular county and you'll be able to see not just the precinct totals, but the amount of outstanding mail-in ballots and you'll know the party breakdown of those ballots as well. so you'll have a great good sense of the direction things are going. and we want to caution people to recognize that the precinct totals are just roughly half of the picture. and donald trump we know is going to be doing everything in his power to sort of muddy the communications and probably even do something legally to stop the

count. what i need you all to know is we're prepared for that. and we'll be ready to make sure that every single legal eligible vote is counted and the president sort of put out a lot of noise leading up to election day and i expect a lot of noise after election day, but what i'm seeing increasingly is that this president is sort of shrinking in a lot of ways. because the noise you're hearing more and more in pennsylvania is the noise of the voters requesting their mail-in ballots, sending them back. and firing up the rest of the people in their community and a lot of people are drowning out the president and the voters are getting a say. after all, that's the way it works in our democracy. >> all right. pennsylvania attorney general josh shapiro, thank you very much. kurt bardella, it's going to be very interesting to see how this pans out and it could drag out for weeks. what concerns do you have about

this election if it's close? >> yeah, i think that's kind of the nightmare scenario for a lot of us is that we have a close election and that the president tries to prematurely tries to declare a vote and tries to stop the votes that come in by mail and they'll be put through the mechanism and republicans will be turning out to the polls so it's possible that donald trump wins the election day turnout but loses horribly in the mail, but the only way to get there is if we count all of the ballots. it wouldn't surprise me if the election starts to go towards biden and people like a mitch mcconnell or tim mccarthy congratulate joe biden before donald trump is going to. this is the most solemn part of our democracy. this is why it works, the peaceful transition of power and the belief there's faith in the

election and there's really the stress test we are under right now. and while we're holding our breath that there's a definitive outcome early it can take some time. that election day isn't -- it's the last day that we vote, but it's not the date that all votes will be counted. a lot of this is expect management, the media, the commentators, we need to prepare the american people as much as possible for the fact that it will take some time. taking time means the process is working and the votes are being counted. >> looking ahead to tonight's debate what's on the line for both candidates? >> well, for donald trump it seems everything is on the line. you know, he's playing with a one-deck shoe as i say at the poker tables. i think for vice president biden, it's continuing the momentum he's been able to grow. he's running a steady and consistent campaign and how the media reacts to it. i wrote a piece for "usa today" and say we do not need to fall into the trap of grading trump

on the trump curve. when he does something the first time that's horrible, the next time if it's not as bad, well, that's not so bad. i think back to 2016, this is the night that he became president but it's terrible. it's xenophobic, attacking minorities. but because it was considered delivered better than the inauguration speech it was considered better. if he doesn't interrupt as much we can't say that was better than the first debate. if he lies about the biden family or lies about the voting integrity we need to hold him to the standard and not let him get away with having a low bar for success. >> kurt bardella, thank you very much. coming up the cdc expands

the definition of who is considered a close contact of someone infected with coronavirus. what the new guidance means for schools, workplaces and other group settings. as we go to break, a look at some of the coverage you'll be seeing on the newsstand with a common theme. "time" is publishing a special report on the closing days of the 2020 campaign and the time logo on the cover has been replaced with another word -- vote. and new york magazine has brought together 48 artists from a diverse array of backgrounds to design i voted stickers for a series of four covers. "morning joe" is back in a moment. - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven.

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expanded the definition of who is considered a close contact of an individual infected with the coronavirus. the updated guidance now defines a close contact as someone who has been within six feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or more across a 24-hour period. in other words, shorter but repeated contacts that add up to 15 minutes over a 24-hour period now count. the change could have the biggest impact in schools, workplaces and other group settings are people where in contact with others for long periods of time. it underscores the importance of mask wearing to prevent the spread of the virus and speaking of masks, former new jersey governor chris christie who spent a week in intensive care battling coronavirus earlier this month says he regrets not wearing one at the white house during the rose garden

nomination event for judge amy coney barrett and during debate preps with president trump. in a new op-ed publiced in "the wall street journal" entitled i should have worn a mask, christie writes this. i mistook the bubble of security around the president for a viral safe zone. i was wrong. there is no safe zone from this virus. one of the worst aspects of america's divided politics is the polarization of something as practical as a mask. it is not a partisan or a cultural symbol, not a sign of weakness or virtue. it's simply a good method, no at perfect one, but a proven one to contain a cough or prevent the virus from getting in your mouth or your nose. wear it or you may regret it as i did. it's never comfortable to deliver real criticism that includes yourself, but it was a serious failure for me. as a public figure to go maskless at the white house, i

paid for it and i hope americans can learn from my experience. i am lucky to be alive. well, he went as far as to blame himself, willie, and i venture to say there might have been more people involved with the whole concept of not wearing a mask at the white house. but i'm glad chris christie is bad. >> i'm glad he's better and glad he's speaking out on something that's obvious to public health experts. you should be wearing a mask right through. joining us is the president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation, dr. richard besser. good to have you with us. i want to talk big picture first. i went unnoticed yesterday, but the cdc had a news briefing where they said there's a distressing trend in the country to use their term that case counts were up in 75% of the states in this country. so from where you're sitting, where are we now in this public health crisis as we roll into the fall and the winter as you

and others have warned us? >> i think we're in a very dangerous period in this pandemic for many reasons. one is that as we have talked about, the fall and winter as it gets colder, viruses do better. they hang in the air longer when it's cold and when humidity's down and we're in closer contact with each other. so viruses can spread. so that's a real challenge no matter what. but we're facing a across the country incredible fatigue with the whole restrictions put on people's lives. at a time you need people to step it up more, be more conscientious in terms of hand washing and social distancing, you're seeing more unwilling to do it. you heard from chris christie, you want to hear this from across the political spectrum and hopefully it will encourage more people to see masks as a public health measure and not a

political measure. but this period with kids in school, with a lot of young people returning home from college, from university, with more people back at work it's a really critical period in this pandemic and we need people coming together. >> the boston public school system went back to remote learning because their positivity rates in the city of boston reached a certain threshold where they said they'll have to pull bang for a couple of weeks until they got it where they like it. new york city on the other hand has done great knock on wood so far with its -- you know, obviously the largest population of students in the country. what should we expect in schools? again, going into the fall and the winter. i think people are encouraged in new york city and other places at how it's gone so far. but what will schools look like? >> well, i think what you're seeing in terms of boston having to pull back hopefully for a short period of time is what

you're going to see around the country. if states and localities are truly monitoring this and responding not to something from hundreds or thousands of miles away in terms of everyone should be back in school, but responding to their local conditions, you're going to see schools and investigate and realize that they'll have to pull back for a little bit. it's going to be challenging, though. when you think, willie, about the millions of people in america who don't have sick leave or family medical leave, what happens to them when all of a sudden their kids who were in school are going to be at home. we really need congress to step up and provide the support to everyone across america so when these changes occur everyone can comply with them. >> dr. besser, mike barnicle has a questions for you. >> doctor, i want to talk to you about immunity. there seems to be some confusion about it when it comes to covid. the confusion has been added to by some of the remarks that the president of the united states has made about immunity. so if you get covid and you

suffer from covid and you recover from covid, are you immune from covid forever or for a period of two weeks, or do we know? >> yeah, this is one of those things that we just don't know. you know, clearly you get some level of protection or we would be seeing far more cases of second round of covid than we've seen. i think there are about five that have been very well-documented, but we don't know how long protection lasts. for some infections when you get it, something like chickenpox, for most people it's lifelong protection. for other things, you know, you can get a cold virus many times throughout your life. so with this, we just don't know. so you don't want people who have had covid to go out and say i don't need to do anything, i don't need to protect myself or others from me. you need everyone to couldn't to comply. if we don't get much in the way of protection if a natural infection, it makes it very less likely that a vaccine will provide the kind of long-term protection that we want to see.

if you only get a year's protection from an infection, you would expect even if there is a safe and effective vaccine you'd need to get it many times over your life, not one of knees one and done. >> dr. richard besser, thank you very much for being on the show this morning, and jonathan lemire, i don't think that donald trump's going to be taking dr. besser's advice or looking at the science. he continues to say that we're rounding the corner. it will be very interesting to see how he handles the question tonight. >> and certainly he's done nothing like chris christie has done where he's apologized for his stance on masks. he still to this day rarely wears them. senior staff on air force one often don't wear them on the plane. he is still at rally after rally night after night, his rhetoric on the coronavirus has not changed even in the wake of his own, of course, battle with the

virus. he still is sort of down playing it. he's suggesting that the united states is turning the corner on the virus, that the pandemic will soon be behind us. well, evidence points to the contrary. the cases are up in most states across the country right now. school systems are closing. certain states right now are in really dire straits with the number of infections, and we've had medical expert after medical expert including dr. fauci suggest that's only going to get worse as the weather continues to get colder, viruses live longer and more people are congregating indoors. whether it's tonight on the debate stage or the final 12 days of this race, i don't think we should expect the president at all to moderate his rhetoric on the pandemic to come clean with the american people as to where things are but rather to continue to down play it pointing to his own recovery as an example of what the nation can do as he has done since march, fixates on the economic impact far more than the health one. >> jonathan lemire, thank you

very much. and still ahead, how speaker nancy pelosi will be our guest as she works to strike a deal with the trump administration over covid relief. plus, new polling from just about every battleground state out this morning, we'll show you where things stand with election day just 12 days away. and as we go to break, former president barack obama offering up a tutorial for how to vote by mail this year. take a look. the first thing, vote your ballot front and back. the presidential election gets all the attention, but in fact, oftentimes you're going to have a bunch of local races. to vote, fill in the oval as shown in the picture to the right, can't just do a check or an x, that won't count. the first person to vote for is my favorite candidate for president and vice president. generally i don't share my ballot, in this case, though, i

think you all know i'm voting for joe biden and kamala harris. how about no no uh uh, no way come on, no no n-n-n-no-no

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look, i get that this president wants full credit for the economy he inherited and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored, but you know what? the job doesn't work that way. tweeting at the television doesn't fix things. making stuff up doesn't make people's lives better. you've got to have a plan. you've got to put in the work. >> that pandemic is rounding the corner. they hate it when i say it. you know, you turn onto this msdnc and fake news cnn, all you hear is covid covid covid covid covid covid covid. that's all they put on because they want to scare the hell out of everyone, and you know, the

more testing you have, the more cases. they say cases are up, yeah, testing is up. we have more testing than india, china, and almost every other country put together. >> we literally left this white house a pandemic playbook that would have shown them how to respond before the virus reached our shores. they probably used it to, i don't know, prop up a wobbly table somewhere. we don't know where that playbook went. eight months into this pandemic cases are rising again across this country. donald trump isn't suddenly going to protect all of us. he can't even take the basic steps to protect himself. >> with covid, is there anything that you think you could have done difrferently, if you had a mulligan or a doover on one aspect? >> not much. it's all over the world. you have a lot of great leaders. it came out of china, china

should have stopped it. they stopped it from spreading into other parts of chooina aft wuhan. china should have stopped it. no, not much. i did it very early. >> just last night he complained up in erie that the pandemic made him go back to work. i'm quoting here. he was upset that the pandemic's made him go back to work. if he'd actually been working the whole time, it never would have gotten this bad. >> oh, my god. good morning, and welcome to "morning joe." it is thursday, october 22nd. along with joe, willie and me, we have historian and vanderbilt university professor jon meacham, politics and journalism professor at morgan state university, politics editor and an msnbc political contributor, jason johnson, and nbc news capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early" kasie hunt is with us. >> you know, willie, it was hard to imagine having two presidents any different than george w.

bush and barack obama. but there you see the split screen of barack obama and donald trump, and donald trump late into october less than two weeks to go until the election is still living in an age of magical thinking where he is still saying that we're turning the corner, things are getting better, this while school systems are shutting down, outbreaks are raging across the midwest, things are getting worse. you talk to doctors, you talk to epidemiologists, the situation is getting worse. yet, donald trump is sitting there still acting like this is a media hoax. up way back at the beginning when donald trump in february called this a media hoax? he's actually reverted -- and oh, by the way, all of the anti, anti-trump fools that have

really been shamefully responsible for the continued support of this man by a lot of their people love the anti, anti-trump said, oh, no, he wasn't calling it a hoax. he was just saying the media was whipping it up into a frenzy. he called it a hoax. he's doing the same thing now suggesting that networks that cover the deadliest pandemic in over a century as it rages into the fall are somehow part of this media hoax. he has learned absolutely nothing, 220,000 deaths later. >> i had the same thought watching that speech last night, which is if he made that speech in february, it wouldn't have been much different than it is today. the difference is instead of zero deaths or one death at that time, there are now 223,360 deaths the same way we say a lot of these rallies could have been lifted out of 2016 with the lock

her up chants and the attacks on the media and all that strategy and placed into 2020, this speech looked like something from another time where we hadn't learned anything and where, as you say, if you look at the map, cases are spiking across the country. that's not a matter of opinion. that's a matter of data. that's a matter of science. it's real. it's happening, it's not a hoax, so, yes, we're going to continue to talk about covid, covid, but you're right, there couldn't have been a bigger contrast with president obama and a systematic takedown unlike we haven't seen before of the last four years under president trump. >> yeah, it was quite something, and by the way, those cases around the country, there are small surge spots that will happen wherever this president has held his super spreader events, dating back to tulsa, one of the rallies that led to a spread in coronavirus. you know, state and local health officials have been watching the numbers, when he holds a super spreader event, the numbers go up. so he's adding to it as opposed

to subtracting on these numbers, he's adding. we have a slew of new battleground state polling. in pennsylvania biden leads by ten points in the latest cnn ssrs poll, by eight points in the new quinnipiac university poll, by seven points in the latest usa today suffolk university poll, and by five in the new fox news poll. let's go to iowa, the latest monmouth poll puts biden up by three, which falls within the margin of error. the "new york times" sienna college poll has biden up three points within the margin of error. in florida both the latest cnn ssrs and the reuters ipsos polls show biden leading by four points, 50 to 46%, within the margins of error. in michigan, the new fox news poll has biden up by 12, 52 to

40%. in wisconsin the fox news poll has biden up five points, 49 to 44. in arizona the latest reuters ipsos poll has biden with a three-point lead, 49 to 46 within the margin of error, and in ohio, the fox news poll shows trump ahead by three points, 48 to 45 within the margin of error. let's look at texas, the latest quinnipiac university poll shows the two candidates tied at 47% a apiece. that's a lot of different states to look at, joe. what do they tell you? >> well, what they tell us is what we've been thinking for some time, and that is that, again, willie, that donald trump is having real problems in the area where he was expecting to, you know, run to victory, in the upper midwest. wisconsin, michigan,

pennsylvania, those states were the states that gave him obviously a shocking victory in 2016, but you look at pennsylvania, plus eight, plus seven, plus five, michigan plus 12, wisconsin plus five poll there which is a little below what it usually is. and even in iowa, two polls out yesterday showing that joe biden up by three points. that's, of course, a state that donald trump carried by nine. again, if this were any other candidate, if this were any other election cycle, we would be talking about the end for donald trump, but of course it's not because there are a lot of polls that show donald trump doing poorly four years ago. the question is do the pollsters have it right this year? and if they do, even in the state of florida where these polls suggest he's down by four, i still think it's going to end up being a one-point race. if it's more than a one-point race either direction, then election night over the rest of

the country this election is not going to be close. you look right now, the numbers look very good for joe biden. of course the big asterisk is the polls looked good for hillary clinton at this point four years ago. still ahead, the rage, steve kornacki is standing by at the big board. he's got a look at the road to 270 and which key battlegrounds president trump must win to get a second term. plus, a live interview with house speaker nancy pelosi. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. my nunormal: fewer asthma attacks. less oral steroids. taking my treatment at home. nucala is a once-monthly add-on injection for severe eosinophilic asthma.

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let's bring in national political correspondent for news nbc news and msnbc, steve kornacki. what are some of the scenarios you see playing out here? >> let's take a look here at the road to 270. this is how things landed in 2016, of course, trump with 306,

but let's work off those poll numbers you were just going through right there. i think three states you were just talking about them really jump out, and it's pennsylvania, michigan, and wisconsin, and remember, when trump won those states in 2016 in all three of those states his margin was less than a point. it was a fraction of a point, and of course these were also states that had not gone for a republican in three decades, since the 1980s. so these were narrow wins in traditionally democratic states that made all the difference from how important are these states for trump. look at it this way, those polls we just showed you, if wisconsin went to biden, if michigan went to bidens and if pennsylvania went to biden, those three states alone that trump won by the skin of his teeth in 2016 would put joe biden over the top, and trump would be in a position at that point, he could win florida, he could win carolina, he could win arizona, georgia, texas, ohio, iowa, everything else he could sweep them. if he does not get one of those

three midwest states he flipped in 2016, he's under 270, doesn't win the election. the only other thing he could do at that point is he could pick off a state that hillary clinton won in 2016, but then you're in a world where he's losing these three states but somehow winning minnesota. he's losing these three states but somehow getting new hampshire and nevada. it becomes implausible if he can't hang on to at least one of these battleground states, and certainly his campaign has been treating pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes as their most likely target there in terms of their time, in terms of their resources. if trump did find a way to hang onto pennsylvania, okay, now he'd be back to 280, he's have to defend florida, he'd have to defend north carolina. he still would have a very, very small margin for error. but just to stay in this thing on election night, that's one way of looking at it, i think. these three, he's got to find a way to win at least one. >> and of course, if he doesn't

win florida it's over. right now there are two polls that came out showing joe biden up by four points. that's hard to believe. it's hard to believe, again, talking to the people that know this state better than anybody else, it's hard to believe that this race is going to be decided by more than one percentage point. talk about florida and how actually the results that we get in -- okay, talking about weeks, we may be doing this for weeks and weeks and months and months. of course the alternative to that is the fact that florida could let us know by 9:00 p.m. on election night who's going to win in either direction. i remember in 2004 seeing the numbers come out of miami-dade, broward, and palm beach county what republicans call the killing fields every four years, and i saw that george bush had far outperformed how he did in 2000, and i turned to everybody on set then and said this is not going to be 2000.

george bush is going to win florida fairly comfortably. talk about what we know by 8:00 p.m. election night. >> yeah, that's the fascinating thing, joe. in florida they were kind of doing covid style elections before covid, extensive mail-in voting, extensive early voting, getting them all tabulated and reported out quickly so that, yeah, i think we're in a situation in florida on -- these are famous last words, of course, because once upon a time on tuesday night florida was a disaster. we're going go gto get in that t hour all the early vote and all the mail-in vote they've tabulated and the rest is going to come in in most of these counties very quickly. you're going to be able to look at counties if florida, places along the gulf coast where at about 8:30 on election night 2016 you could see trump was running up the score compared to

mitt romney four years earlier where turnout was through the roof and where you could say something is happening there in florida, and then you could quickly work your way up and say north carolina you saw it, the midwest you saw it. by 8:30, election night 2016, you had a sense that the political world was changing because of florida. that could be the case again on election night 2020 because, again, i just reset it to 2016. if biden were to get florida -- and you say this possibly get a result there on election night relatively early, if biden were to get florida, that alone brings that total from hillary clinton's 232 to 261. that's not enough for biden, but that puts him in a situation where basically any one other state, look, i just said pennsylvania, but it could be michigan, any one other state with florida pretty much would put him over 270. so yeah, florida, kind of sets up as the state with the potential to get a lot of its vote in, to really give aus a readout and kind of sets almost as an early elimination for

donald trump. he's got to win it. we're going to get florida and i think potentially north carolina in those early hours. a lot of carolina at least. >> wow. coming up, it was over two years ago here on "morning joe" that one of our next guests said it would be perfectly legitimate for democrats to expand the supreme court to 11 justices. we'll talk to cnbc founder tom rogers about where that debate stands today. and as we go to break, note that joe's new book "saving freed freed freedom: truman, the cold war, and the fight for western civilization" is coming out november 24th. you can preorder now. "morning joe" is back in a moment. nice. this is the new buick? i think you mean the new alexa. it's a buick.

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jason, as you look at the numbers that come flooding out, of course yesterday numbers that the trump campaign obviously is not pleased with, it's hard not to go back four years and say, well, hillary was ahead as well. the one thing that the biden people will say, even though

they are really actually about as paranoid as any group you've ever seen, they will not say they have a chance to even win this election, but they will say this. they will say this, the one thing that biden has hillary never had was a huge collection of polls where he was over 50%. that is for anybody that's ever run, that is the magic number when you're looking at polling. >> yeah, joe, so there's a couple of things about these new poll numbers, and i always tell people when i teach my classes, how do you read polls? nobody is leading until somebody is averaging 49 to 50 something % of t present of the vote. when hillary clinton was leading 46 to 44, 48 to 42, there were too many undecideds, and undecideds tend to -- you don't always know where they're going to go. sometimes they break for the opposition, that's one thing we've seen. joe biden hasn't just been leading in these states, but he's averaging, 51, 52, 54% of

the vote, and that is huge. the second thing that's really key, it's not that the polls in 2016 were wrong. it's that we were paying attention to the national polls and not the state polls. after the comey letter, were trending against hillary clinton in key western state. everybody thought this is sort of background noise et cetera. we haven't had that. if anything, all the october surprises which at this point happen every 15 minutes, they've always been about donald trump. the bad news that's been breaking in october has been about donald trump, and we've seen polls trend in favor of joe biden. and i always say this is important ananecdotally, rega regardless of what the national polls say, you can always tell how a race is going by looking at how members of the house and senate are behaving. if they start backing away from hillary clinton like we saw in 2016, that means their internal

polls are bad. what have we seen, ben sasse, we've seen more and more republicans come out and say, hey, by the way, i wasn't in favor of this thing that president trump was doing, and these are in red states that we're seeing it. so i think internally you're seeing republicans be very, very concerned about these numbers. it doesn't just require sort of propaganda from the white house, and again, it's good that joe biden is not going to be complace complacent. it's good they're still out there campaigning, but this is a race that barring something strange is trending towards joe biden at a state level in addition to a national one. >> so jon meacham, we are 12 days out from what i think you and i would probably assume to be the most important election of our lifetime. the final debate is tonight against the backdrop of these polls. what are you expecting, and what's on the line tonight in the biden/trump debate? >> well, you know, the traditional thing to say here is this is the last chance to change the narrative and to

alter the dynamic of the race, but i think a lot of the analysis that we understandably offer is analog. you know, we're living in the political equivalent of climate change right now, right? extreme weather. it's manmade, our appetites, our ambitions helped create this climate, and i think the real story is in my just sort of historical dorky view is what is it about donald trump and his performance as president that has convinced 47 to 48% of the country or of these states that you've been showing that he should be president again? right? and i'm not saying this as some sort of reflexive crazy liberal, right? i live in tennessee. i've voted for republicans. i've voted for democrats. you and i are talking in large part because when i was a kid,

ronald reagan captured my imagination as this figure of the kind of dignity and grace and the presidency. i'm george bush's biographer. this is not a reflexively partisan thing to say. it's a genuine question about 46.1% of the country voted for donald trump last time, and that numb is up a little bit? you know, i mean, that's the big story of the age is that because the contrast, what's going to be vivid on the stage tonight, i think, is you're going to have a bombastic bullying clearly out of his depth incumbent talking over and trying to bully both the moderator and the democratic nominee, and the democratic nominee is not outside the american mainstream. in many ways he is the mainstream. joe biden is a center left figure, even if not a centrist

figure. you know, he's totally explicable and understandable in terms of new deal through obama politics, and that's great, and that has its vices, too. and one of the reasons donald trump is president is because people found that conversation and that culture to be incommensurate to their challenges and their needs in a global era. okay, but we can have that conversation, right? we don't need to go to reality show ber lits classes to try to understand that. we understand what biden is saying, and i was totally struck by -- i went around on the social media yesterday, the video of joe biden greeting special needs son of a victim of the parkland shooting. mika, you sent it out, too. >> yeah. >> watch that and just answer a fundamental question. watch that and then watch trump

dismissing covid, covid, covid as we hit 225,000 deaths, and you tell me who do you want in charge of your affairs? >> coming up, the speaker of the house, nancy pelosi is standing by. she joins the conversation next on "morning joe."

we took a bad economy that was falling and turned it around. trump took a good economy and drove it back into the ditch through his failure to get covid under control, his failure to deliver real relief to working people. does he not understand and see the tens of millions of people who've had to file for unemployment this year, so far? the people who lost wages while the cost of groceries has gone up dramatically. donald trump has been almost singularly focused on the stock market, the dow, the nasdaq -- not you, not your families. my plan will help create at least five million new, good-paying jobs and create them right here in the united states of america. let's use this opportunity to take bold investments in american industry and innovation. so the future is made in america. i'll be laser focused on working families. ♪ i'm joe biden, and i approve this message.

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traffic and air pollution will be even worse after the pandemic. that's why we support measure rr to keep caltrain running. which is at risk of shutdown because of the crisis. to keep millions of cars off our roads, to reduce air pollution and fight climate change. and measure rr helps essential workers like me get to work and keep our communities healthy. relieve traffic. reduce pollution. rescue caltrain. [all] yes on measure rr. were coming together -- >> i asked you what's the priority? i mean, those are all the good things. what do you have to solve? >> the priority now is to get back to normal, get back to where we were, to have the economy rage and be great with

jobs and everybody be happy, and that's where we're going, and that's where we're heading. >> and who is our biggest foreign adversary? >> i would say china. they're an adversary. >> they're the biggest. >> they're a competitor. they're a foe in many ways, but they're an adversary. i think what happened was disgraceful, should never have happened. they should never have allowed this plague to get out of china and go throughout the world, 188 countries. should never have happened. >> that is a preview clip released just this morning by cbs news of lesley stahl's "60 minutes" interview with president trump which will air in full this sunday. the president just tweeted this, quote, i will soon be giving a first in television history full unedited preview of the vicious attempted takeout, he writes, interview of me by lesley stahl of "60 minutes," watch her interruptions and anger, compare my full flowing and

magnificently brilliant answers to their questions. >> okay. he's -- >> he's back on. he's got his phone back. >> he's got it back. >> a few people, guys, have ever given more publicity to an interview he doesn't want anyone to see than donald trump is giving to this "60 minutes" interview. >> nailed it. >> we talked about this after bob woodward released his book that for donald trump coming of age as a public figure in the '70s and the '80s, for him bob woodward, "60 minutes", that means that this guy from queens has made it. >> mm-hmm. >> and so even if it's a fight with "60 minutes," he wants the whole world to see it. i do think it's interesting, though, i mean, you know, he's just lying through his teeth. he says he's the best economy ever, you know. if you look at the last 10, 11

presidents, i think he's like sixth or seventh in terms of the rate of economic growth. jimmy carter, his economy grew faster than donald trump's, so did, you know, so many others. so it's just, again, mika, he's upset because lesley stahl is interrupting him because he's not allowed to just sit there and lie, which i think is a good preview -- >> absolutely. >> -- for the debate tonight. one of the reasons this guy can't help but interrupt is because he knows he can't win when people get the true facts in front of them. >> and that will be a challenge for kristen welker tonight because if the president is spewing out disinformation, you know, at some point that can't stand. if you're going to have a debate, you have to debate actual facts, not just let this guy run roughshod. apparently he did not do that

over lesley stahl and he got up and stormed out of the room like a little baby. meanwhile, house speaker nancy pelosi and treasury secretary steven mnuchin continue to work towards a stimulus deal as time is running out to reach an agreement before election day. and speaker pelosi joins us now. madame speaker, thank you for being on. give us a sense as to exactly where these talks stand and what the hope is to get relief to the american people. >> i'm happy to do that, mika, but i wanted first to go back to what jon meacham said skipping over what you just showed, i don't think the president has any idea of what the truth is. i think that he thinks the truth is what he says, so it's a sad situation. but you go back with what jon said, and jon said how can 46% or whatever it is of the american people have thought that was okay for him to be president. let's talk about how we go, we

heal as we go forward and be respectful of everyone in our country and how they voted, and jon is always so inspirational, so i just wanted to say i think the healing process has to begin well before the election. we've tried to start that and joe biden is just the best person to do that. but here's the thing that is really sad. these people in our countries, i've traveled the country for years now, speaker, leader and whatever, they've always respected the constitution of the united states, whether they agreed with you, democrats, republicans, different point of view, the constitution was essential. many of them took the oath to protect and defend it, and now all of a sudden the total disregard that he has for the constitution seems to be okay with them. that's sad. we have to bring people back to e plur bus u numb, couldn't imagine how many we'd be or how

different we'd be, for us to -- i think in the press you could be helpful with this, let's not characterize them as not educated. they are educated. they're educated in winning our wars, raising our families, building our communities and the rest, and i think that the respect that they are owed and the commitment that we share to the constitution can be a place where we can come together. now, there's some of them we will never get, and you know why. it's no use my going into that, but i do think that as we look at what this president might do to undermine the constitution, the election, the environment, fairness, who we are as a people denigrating newcomers and the rest has been so destructive. it's no use dwelling on that, we just have to go forward. and one of the ways we have to go forward is to crush this virus, which has a disproportionate impact on many

poor people in our country, people of color and the rest, and so to your question, yes, the secretary and i continue our conversation. we're pretty soon ready put pen to paper. we actually already are making certain proposals in that regard because if we don't crush the virus, we're never going to be able to open our economy, our schools and everything safely. finally, finally, and when i say finally, i mean in the last couple of days, the administration has agreed to a strategic plan science based, well funded to take on the virus. this has taken all these months since february and our bill since five months ago, march 14th, but now we are -- now we're at a place where they have finally, and again, only in the last few days, but nonetheless, i see that it's progress.

we have other issues that we have to deal with, but we're on a good path. >> you've been traveling the country as you said for years as leader, as speaker, and i'm curious what your thoughts are about what john and i were talking about earlier as it pertains, again, to many of my friends, many of my loved ones, people that, family members that -- and people who do anything for me. still supporting donald trump 13 days out when he is calling for the arrest of his political challenger, when he's asking his attorney general to do that. and i think you were right. we have to move forward and heal this country as abraham lincoln said in his second inaugural with malice towards none, but the question is how did we get to this point where so many

people can disregard the constitution when a guy is talking, again, like an eastern european totalitarian thug who wants to arrest his opponent less than two weeks before an election. >> well, you and i have people that we love who will vote for donald trump, and it's really hard to understand why. i do think that we have opportunity. i'd rather be looking forward. i hope that the republicans will take back their party, the grand old party that has meant so much to our country highjacked by this -- i don't know, this phenomen phenomenon. you have to give them credit for being a con artist to the n degree. forgetting him and going forward because in 12 days, 13 days we'll be on to our future. i don't take anything for

granted. i feel confident because we're working so very hard to make sure that that happens. but again, to your point, again, how do we get here? you and i can have that conversation. listening to people and even now virtually they preferred him personally to the other person, sadly, for whatever reason. secondly, they didn't think he was going to win. this is -- we didn't think he was going to win. we just made a protest vote. we didn't think he'd win, or third, i thought he'd make a decent president. i thought he'd rise to the occasion. our country has paid a big price for this. again, looking forward, republicans, how courageous so many of them are to come out for joe biden. how strong some are who may be helpful in the transition shall we say, and the -- and then,

again, we have to be talking to each other about how we go forward, and what better cause to get -- it's a horrible cost, but what more important reason than to stop a pandemic and to stop it in a way that is fair. you know, one of the faights tht we had with republicans is they took out all of the language that addressed minorities in the bill. now, if you are a black child, you are five times more likely to go to the hospital with covid than a white child. if you're an hispanic child, you're eight times more likely to go to the hospital with covid. again, more people of color have died than white people of it, and that's because we did not make what we had to do in testing, tracing, treatment, mask wearing, sanitation, separation, and the rest of that that science told us from the start would stop the spread of

this, and we have to, again, crush that. and that's something that could bring us together when we have leadership in the white house instead of it's a hoax. you know, again, you know and i know that when a president speaks, people listen. especially if they voted for him, he must be right, right? or i'm wrong, i have bad judgment if he's not right in terms of themselves. they're protecting their own judgment that they made. but again, when he speaks and says this, it's a comfort to know that this isn't spreading, that you don't have to wear a mask, any of that. but it's false, and he's listening to voices that are almost on the verge of quackery in terms of how we address this. let's use that as something that unifies us. as we do so, this is one of my projects within this is to make

america's schools the safest places in our country for our children to learn. why shouldn't we? it only takes money and a lot less money than the president is giving in tax breaks in the c.a.r.e.s. act to the richest people in our country. >> speaker pelosi, it's willie geist, good to have you on this morning. as you talk about your negotiation with secretary mnuchin, i understand you all will be speaking again today to try to get a deal. there was some indication from mark meadows and others you might have a deal even by the end of the week. does that still sound right to you, and what do you say to all those people who i know you hear from in your own district who are really suffering and aren't interested in the political fight but want to save their small business or their family and they need some money in their pocket as soon as possible? >> i say help is on the way. it will be better. it will be bolder. it will be safer, and it will be retroacti retroactive, but the fact is is that while we can't correct everything in one bill, we shouldn't be making matters

worse, and that's what the republicans have been doing, making matters worse. so in our legislation we're coming closer to what we must do, crush the virus, honor our heroes, our state and local dpo governments, health care workers, transportation, sanitation, teachers, teachers, teachers, police and fire, first responders who make our system work, and they risk their lives to save lives, and now they may lose their jobs. you heard the president's irresponsible really stupid tweet that he did again -- well, i characterize his tweets, that seems to be standard, but the fact is that we have to do that if we're going to, if we're going to have the health care people, the teachers in place and the rest to get the job done, and then of course to put money in the pockets of the american people. my view is the president has only wanted to be able to send out that check, but one check --

one check is not the solution to this. we have to have ongoing and that's one of the debates we're having right now is earned income tax credit, child tax credit, things to lift people out of poverty. six to eight depending on the numbers you follow, million people have fallen into poverty, back into poverty as the c.a.r.e.s. act benefits wear off. we have to restore that. one check doesn't do it. it's like i'm sending you a fish. >> instead of i'm setting you up to fish. >> you hear what the leader in the senate is saying, that's really up to the president. we're negotiating with him. we've made progress, and i have to say we've made progress in this regard, but we're still not there, but we can be. we can be, and you know, it's --

we know, our members know how people are suffering. you should see the fight we had to get food, to get food it was a fight. so understand, we don't share values, so it's a harder discussion than usual burt i'm still optimistic because i think both sides want to come to agreement. otherwise why would we even be talking to each other? i mean, this is not, shall we say an enjoyable conversation. in any event, it's necessary to have. >> right. >> house speaker nancy pelosi, thank you so much, and thank you for being on the show this morning. up next, we're now just minutes away from the senate judiciary committee vote to advance the supreme court nomination of amy coney barrett. all ten democrats on the committee are boycotting the vote. instead they've filled their seats with posters of people who rely on obamacare.

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we knew that this was really, really bad. we had ample forewarning. but we did almost no testing, almost no contact tracing. completely ignored the science, completely ignored the warning signs. there were things that could have been done. a lot of people have died needlessly, and there's nothing more frustrating than feeling like you're fighting against someone who should have your back. we are not going to stamp this out unless we have a change of leadership. ff pac is responsible for the content of this ad. if elected, what i'll do is put together a national commission of bi -- bipartisan commission of scholars, constitutional scholars, democrats, republicans, liberal, conservative, and i will ask them to, over 180 days, come back to me with recommendations as to how to reform the court

system because it's getting out of whack. the way in which it's being handled. and it's not about court packing. there's a number of other things that constitutional scholars have debated, and i tlook see what recommendations that commission might make. >> you're going to study this issue about whether to pack the court? >> no, there's a number of alternatives that go well beyond packing. >> this is a live ball. >> it is a live ball. it is a live ball. we'll have to do that. there's a lot of conservative constitutional scholars saying it as well. the last thing we need to do is turn the supreme court into a political football, whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want. presidents come and go. supreme court justices stay for generations. >> we've heard a lot lately about whether the democrats will look to pack the court as a response to the nomination of judge amy coney barrett. it's an idea that our next guest first brought up over two years

ago. cnbc founder tom rogers wrote in june of 2018, quote if the democrats take the house, senate and presidency in 2020, this neutralization of the nuclear option by expanding the court is very viable. moreover, there is much historical precedent for doing so. the democrats could simply increase the number of justices to neutralize any ideologically extreme appointments that president trump is successful in making from this point in time on forward. and tom joins us with a new piece this morning for "newsweek" entitled "unpack the supreme court." what do you mean by that? >> thanks for having me on today, mika. what i mean by that, it's the republicans who packed the court. they threw out three supreme court norms to get three new justices on the court. they denied garland a vote. they reduced the threshold for

senate vote approval and now they're ramming through a new justice one week before an election where close to 40 million people will have voted by then. and so anything that the democrats do to take up the suggestion that you mentioned, i wrote about a couple years ago, would be unpacking the court. and there is historical precedent for it as joe wrote in a recent column. it was the first republican president, abraham lincoln, who actually expanded the court from nine to ten. and the whole notion of packing the court came out of fdr where he put forward six justices to control the outcome. it was defeated. he wasn't able to pack the court. but the idea was to put on six justices that would guarantee the outcome of upholding new deal legislation. the democrats put two new justices on the court. they wouldn't be guaranteeing any outcome. it would still be a 6-5

conservative majority court where roberts would probably be the swing vote. but by no means would they have done anything that controls the outcome. they'd be bringing the court to the center, and they'd be bringing the court into a realm out of extremism into a place where it will have much more legitimacy for its rulings. most importantly, there's a -- i'm sorry. >> no, i was just going to say, it's interesting, tom, that you did bring this up two years ago. it's interesting that conservatives, there were some conservatives who were actually writing columns when they thought hillary clinton was going to be elected president and ted cruz, who suggested the court contracts. for ted cruz he said we don't have to fill the ninth seat. the supreme court can work with eight. there's a long, rich history, originalists, especially, should support a flexible size for a supreme court because you go back to the writing of the

constitution. george washington set the number at six even before rhode island had ratified the constitution. then john adams did the same thing in 1801. he expanded it. or took it down one. thomas jefferson added. same thing with andrew jackson. he added members. then you had abraham lincoln add another, as you said. when he died, republicans actually took two or three off and waited until they controlled the white house again to put another on the court. so if originalists say that history doesn't really matter, you have to go back to the founding of the republic and see what the framers and people around that document were thinking at the time, well, my gosh, the first, second, third and seventh presidents all altered the size of the court. >> great point, joe. and there's an even more modern precedent. this is, i'm very surprised, has

not entered the debate because it's sitting right in front of everybody today. and it's our courts of appeal. most are familiar with the fact there's a trial court with one judge and then you get a right of appeal in the federal courts to a court of appeals three-judge panel. when those courts of appeal hear their most important cases, when they are acting most like the supreme court where they decide what cases to hear, they are not required to hear them. just like the supreme court isn't required to hear any case. when they hear those big cases, they meet on bock. that means 11 judges of the courts of appeal hear the case. that's how the world works today. and so in some circuits, even more judges sit. one circuit has 16 judges who sit in those cases. it brings more perspectives to the decision. so right there it would be bringing the supreme court up to the standard of how the courts of appeal work when their most important cases are heard.

not to mention the fact that the workload on the supreme court has grown exponentially in the last couple of decades. adding a couple of justices to the court would very much help that. and we've expanded the number of circuits where you mentioned just before, historically, had a thrott lot to do with adding justices because they personally oversee the courts of appeal. we now have 12, actually one specialty court, 13 circuits, and yet we don't have enough justices on the supreme court each to individually oversee a circuit. there's a lot of reform measures here, which wouldn't guarantee any outcomes but would bring the supreme court up to the standards of the court of appeals that they've already adopted. >> tom rogers, thank you very much for being on. by the way, everyone, tonight joe, willie and i will be leading coverage of the final presidential debate on peacock. nbc universal's free streaming

app. we'll be joined by "the washington post's" bob woodward, nbc's john heilemann, member of "the new york times" editorial board, mara gay and michael beschloss and michael schmidt is going to jump in. 8:45 eastern. find it at peacocktv.com or download it from the app store. should be fun. should be fascinating to watch this dynamic, joe. >> it really should. and, willie, we go into the final debate tonight. donald trump has 12 days to try to turn things around as much as he can. republicans expect to get swamped in early voting, but they need a strong turnout on election day. they are banking all of their hopes on that. i suspect tonight we'll have a lot to do with how enthusiastic donald trump's voters will be 12 days from now. >> another list of bad polls this morning for donald trump in swing states. he's got to do something to change the dynamic in the next 12 days.

but the idea that you're going to see a different donald trump in a debate after five years of watching him in politics, preposterous to most viewers. >> that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. >> hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's thursday, october 22nd. debate day. just 12 days left in the presidential election. 36 million americans have already cast their votes. this is the scene in nashville, tennessee, where president trump and former vp joe biden will meet face to face in tonight's debate. but it comes amid stunning new intelligence warnings that russia and iran are actively trying to undermine your vote and potentially sway this election. officials say those two countries have obtained voter information and they are reaching out to americans directly. maybe even you at home trying to spread misinformation. and in some cases, threatening. threatening people if they do not