i will say our entire democracy got a little bit of a boost or perhaps a big one from kristen welker who really did -- delivered a commanding performance that i think means that we will see these debates return and that's good for all of us. thank you for getting up "way too early" on this friday morning. stick around because "morning joe" starts right now. i have released all of my tax returns. 22 years, go look at them. 22 years of my tax returns. you have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. what are you hiding? why are you unwilling? the foreign countries are paying you a lot. russia's paying you a lot. china's paying you a lot and all your businesses all around the country, all around the world. >> i prepaid millions and millions of dollars in taxes. number one. number two, i don't make money from china. you do. i don't make money from ukraine.

you do. i don't make money from russia, you made $3.5 million. and 10% had to be give on the big man, you're the big man. >> he doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues it's not about my family, but it's about your family. your family is hurting badly right now. you're sitting at the kitchen table, well, we can't get new tires we have to wait another month or so, or can we pay the mortgage, who is going to tell her she can't go back to community college. these are the decisions you're making. we should be talking about your families but that's the last thing he wants to talk about. >> well, there were just a few of the many moments from last night's debate. mika, i feel compelled to say just at the very beginning that,

again, as bob woodward said in our coverage last night, there were so many lies that were said by donald trump but none of them more personal than the lie that joe biden made $3.5 million from ukraine and he kept on speaking as it was fact and after the debate, the "wall street journal" posted an article. >> yes. >> they looked and looked at all of the information and in fact donald trump was lying last night. but he lied to tens of millions of people. there was never a china deal that was completed and joe biden, again, according to the "wall street journal's" investigative reporters have nothing to do with it. but he did that throughout the debate last night and the question simply is this. will it work? >> well, the new format definitely allowed for people to really see that strategy on his

part. it was, willie, a contentious debate, but let's just take a moment and talk about kristen welker, just for a second. because she really did lead these candidates through a fast paced discussion and there were times that donald trump ran over her, but i think it was cringe worthy because it was clear what the rules were and she was as good as it gets. >> she was great. this is hard to do as many debate moderators have proven and they have proven again this year. and she kept it under control. you could see actually that president trump respected the rules, respected the forum -- >> tried to. >> that kristen welker was. he doesn't generally respect them but he did with her. in fact, he stopped in the middle of the debate after talking her in an ugly way and talking her family and said i think you're doing a very good job handling this and then he was leaning in to her saying you

were very professional, you did a good job. but this looked like something we didn't think we'd see with donald trump during a presidential debate. it looked normal. looked like a conventional debate and they actually had a conversation about some issues and his attempts to go after joe biden and hunter biden fell flat to most people. and as you say, joe, "the wall street journal" came out just minutes after the debate ended actually and kind of systematically debunked the story. >> yeah. it's friday, october 23, we're up early after a night covering the debate on peacock which was really fun. along with joe, willie and me we have msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of showtime's "the circus," and executive editor of the recount, john heilemann. nbc news and msnbc contributor shawna thomas is with us this morning. >> so john heilemann, your take on the debate last night? >> so the quick takes, right?

i think quaalude trump is better than crystal meth trump, you know, from the last debate. >> wow. >> that was like an improvement. i think -- >> get the benefit of jon meacham being here without jon meacham being here. who can ever forget when he talked about the crackhead part of thomas jefferson's second administration. but go ahead. so quaalude trump -- so if we're going down that road, they wore off about an hour and 15 into the debate. >> they did. he needed one extra lude to get him through the whole thing and he wasn't quite there. quaalude trump was still not that great. joe biden -- i think, you know, he's best one-on-one. i think his previous best debate

performance was was one-on-one against bernie sanders. i thought biden was clear, on point and making his arguments and did not tire as he sometimes has in some of the debates. he was strong i thought throughout. i thought, you know, the point i think, you know, given the set-up around the hunter biden things, you guys pointed to the "wall street journal" article that debunked it, but it's been all week long. this is what donald trump is going to do. they brought their fact witness, tony bubalinsky or bubba buoy or whoever, that guy, refused to take questions at the press conference and it's not that there were no facts there as it turns out after "the wall street journal" debunked the story, but donald trump's lack of preparation, guys, i think came through. those hunter biden hits are complicated, and trump was not well versed in them. so it sounded to me like

gobbledygook. it was just gibberish coming out of his mouth. the big guy, you're the big guy he said to biden. you didn't understand that. unless you're in the fox news bubble already, you didn't understand a lot of the things that trump was trying to say and i have many more points to make about the debate but here's the key thing, covid. donald trump doesn't have a good answer on his failures on the virus and on the one thing that he has a decent story to tell on which is the rapid development of the vaccine, we're not there yet, but all he's saying is project warp speed but he never explains it to everyone. the negative hits don't land. even the places where he might have a positive story to tell, he doesn't tell them well. so i think there's no basic --

what you needed if you were donald trump is to change the dynamic of the race, he's behind, biden is ahead. did the fundamental s change last night, i don't think so. >> if you look at the reaction from those watching, from those we spoke with, most people thought the debate was a wash. there were some polls that were taken after the debate. they got published earlier this morning but most of the people said that the debate was a wash. biden people thought he won, and people thought that donald trump had a good night. the three polls that we saw suggest that most americans thought that joe biden won the debate. yougov, 54%. cnn, 53 for biden.

and data for progress, 53% for biden. i don't know what impact that has on anything. shawna, there were two moments i'll curious if they'll play a role in the last two 12 days of the campaign. i noticed at least among my friends that support donald trump, evangelicals even who support donald trump, children in cages is the moment that they cringe at and they can't even justify. they can't even blame that on nancy pelosi or aoc. it is a real achilles' heel for donald trump among some. among some of his supporters. i thought the exchange last night was brutal with joe biden talking about the 500 plus children separated and donald trump saying well, they're living in wonderful conditions. then on the other side, at the end i think it was a mistake, i think he made it because he was tired. joe biden just blurting out that he was going to do away with the oil industry. of course, he was speaking in

shorthand to something he's been saying for quite some time. but i'm wondering if we'll see that in ads in texas and pennsylvania for the next 11 days. >> i mean, i think the trump campaign has to take whatever they can get out of this debate and use it, yeah, if they're smart they'll put that in the ad. whether it's in context or out of context. that's something that vice president joe biden is going to have to clean up a little bit i think. but, you know, i think that also may speak to a lot of the supporters that he has. i mean, i don't think this debate -- you already said this, i don't think this shifted people that much. president trump needed to show up and basically say, hey, i'm giving people who are still on the fence, as few undecideds as we know who are out there, but i'm giving people a chance to vote for me. people who are conservative and like the conservative policies he needed to give them a reason

to actually show up and vote because we have seen some long lines in early voting and on election day there will be long lines all across the country, i'm not sure he did that. i'm not sure that joe biden did anything to turn anybody off or anybody new on either. i think we're coming out of the status quo but i think the moment about kids in cages and that are still problematic in this country, the problem was we didn't get that thing that we keep talking about with president trump which is this idea of empathy. when joe biden kind of turned to the camera and said, you know, that this -- that everything is about like families and he went back to the empathetic thing that we expect from joe biden and, you know, president trump just didn't experience that. he didn't say those things. i think those people that you're talking about, joe, the evangelicals and other people who still really want to support president trump, just want to

know that he feels a little bit of something when it comes to something as crazy as kids in cages and 500 plus children who we don't know where their parents are anymore. that isn't -- that isn't similar necessarily to what happened in 2014 which is what president trump tried to bring up. the migrant crisis that the obama administration had to deal with and they didn't deal with it, but trying to turn that information about the very individual children and we don't know where their parents are into a hit about 2014 didn't land and it didn't land because it's one of the things that a lot of people in america don't know very much about, don't necessarily remember and it was hard to understand them. i had to look up the joe biden brother thing. i actually covered the obama

administration from the white house. so kind of a wash last night. but kristen welker did an amazing job and i had to throw that in. my girl, my girl pulled it off last night and i'm so proud of her. >> we can't say that enough for sure. to underline something we talked about last night, guys, there are already 50 million votes in the bank. 5-0. 50 million combined early voting and mail-in voting and when we look at public polling there's a tiny sliver of the country undecided. when we talk about moving the needle it would be hard to move the needle to the extent there's a needle to be moved at this point, regardless of what happened last night. but if anyone needed to move it, as john said, it was donald trump and did he do anything objectively, did he do anything to change the dynamic of the race? it is probably unlikely. they did start off talking about coronavirus this is the one issue that the country is focused on despite what president trump would like to talk about with job loss, with

death, with new cases, worries about a spike coming in the fall and the winter. here's what the president and former vice president joe biden had to say. >> we're learning to live with it. we can't lock ourselves up in a basement like joe does. he has the -- he has the ability to lock himself up. i don't know, he's obviously made a lot of money some place, but he has this thing about living in a basement. people can't do that. by the way, i can't do that, i'd love to put myself in the basement or a beautiful room in the white house and wait a year until it disappears. i can't do that. >> he says we're learning to with it, those at home are learning to die with it. that man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to touch their -- out of habit where their wife or husband was is gone. learning to live with it, come on. we're dying with it. >> and he wants to close down -- he'll close down the country if

one person in our massive bureaucracy says, we should close it down. >> vice president biden, your response. >> simply not true. we ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. we ought to be able to safely open. >> and we're fighting it and fighting it hard. there is a spike, there was a spike in florida and it's gone. there was a big spike in texas it's now gone. there was a very big spike in arizona and it's now gone and there are spikes and surges in other places and they will soon be gone. >> here's the truth about that. over the past week in florida, there have been an average of 2,986 cases per day. an increase of 26% from the average just two weeks earlier. in texas at least 99 new deaths and new cases were reported and there's an average of 5,444 cases per day. that's an increase of 16% from the average of two weeks

earlier. in arizona, there's an average of 898 cases per day and an increase of 55% from the average two weeks earlier. those stats according to "the new york times." so joe, this has been -- just for eight months this has been the approach. it's shocking to see it in the last presidential debate effectively the same case that he's been making since february and march is that it's going to go away. we're going to wish it away. we're rounding the corner. if he closes his eyes and covers his ears hopefully when he opens them they'll be gone and there's no strategy that's the case that joe biden made last night. >> and in years past, every presidential campaign of our life, if a president lied forget about all of the times donald trump lied. he lied about the laptop. he lied about the deal, "the wall street journal" proved he was lying about it.

he lied about these spikes. he said the spike has gone away in florida. you just showed numbers prove that's a lie. the spike went away in texas and you showed the numbers that prove that was lie. he claimed the spike had ended in arizona. you showed numbers that that proved a lie. in campaigns past, if barack obama or mitt romney had done this in 2012, there would have been full page, front page articles not only "the new york times," but "washington post," "wall street journal," "usa today." everybody would be showing the clips and proving that one of those two candidates lied. here, donald trump lies dozens of times at least in a debate. doesn't get the facts wrong, because that happens sometimes with candidates. he just out and out lies and

it's just become accepted by 45, 46% of the population. it's an extraordinary thing and what's so extraordinary, willie, is that i grew up in a washington where republicans tore off their robes and put on sack cloth and ashes for six months and whipped themselves in the back because bill clinton once said it depends on what the meaning of is is. my god, what a deevolution this republican party has made. >> yeah, they baked it into the cake. this is who he is, what do you want us to do about it? i would just suggest that learning to wit is not a strategy and people are learning to live with it in the short term. they're getting their kids through school online and trying to figure out how to make ends meet and they don't want to do it indefinitely and the way

we're doing it without a plan it's going that way. let's bring in the medical director at the boston university school of medicine, dr. nahid bhadelia, an msnbc medical contributor. good to see you. so we have been watching this from the political perspective. i'm curious what you thought watching it from a medical and a public health perspective. >> well, willie, good morning. i think that i was hoping at least to get some acknowledgment from the president about the fact that we are at the precipice now of the trend that we have been worried about with the fall and winter. you mentioned the increase in cases, almost 40 something states are reporting increasing hospitalizations, you know, and their increase -- we know how this goes. cases lead to hospitalizations, hospitalizations lead to states. well 20 something states are reporting increasing deaths over the last 14 days. so we're in that period that we

have been worried about and when americans go out today and during the last two weeks before this election, they're making two types of choices. they're making the choices at the polls but they're making the choices in their life, in terms of do i wear a mask or not. you know, do i go to this crowded indoor gathering or not? and the president is saying it will go away it's confusing part of the population and to the point they're not -- there's already pandemic fatigue and this is driving home additional confusion leading people not taking the steps they need to take to keep themselves and their families safe. that type of disinformation that we can go back to normal, that there will be no consequences, i think, is actually driving us closer to having a lockdown because if we don't buckle down and do the types of steps that, you know, vice president biden

said, which is balance economic opening with potentially decreasing the cases, then we're rushing head long closer in to scenarios where health systems get overwhelmed and we have to consider more extreme choices. which i hope we never get to, but last night didn't help. >> so dr. bhadelia, at 224,280 deaths so far, a death rate of a thousand a day, joe biden brought up masks and the president's lack of leadership on that part meaning he doesn't say everything should wear a mask at all times. you must wear masks, they work. would those numbers be down and would it be significant if the country was on a full-on mask wearing mandate? >> yeah, mika, i think that studies have now shown that widespread use of masks help decrease, you know, cases and then we have seen that from experiences of states.

arizona, 75% decrease after public health measures and mask mandates went into place and what we now know it's not us this just the 220,000 deaths you talked about, but the cdc said there's an access mortality. more people have died more than we can account for on top of that 220,000, an additional almost 300,000. 66% of which could be attributed to covid, so we're just getting some sense of how big this pandemic is. we're not even getting a sense of the impact of the secondary impact on our health systems. the masks would help. the way that this administration has confused this issue with not just president trump but other parts of his own covid task force, dr. atlas speaking out against masks which has driven a divide which other members such

as admiral girard and others are saying, no, masks are necessary and why are we having the discussions eight or ten months into the pandemic. this is the easy part. the harder part would have been having a national pandemic strategy which we haven't worked on. >> dr. bhadelia, thank you for being on the show with us. >> thank you so much. why do we have to go through this? >> because this is the easy part, she's so right. >> because donald trump hires idiots. because he likes their last names. atlas. like a strong -- i'm going to hire a guy who has nothing to do with infectious diseases and let him go out and lie about masks. of course, a lie that will kill people. but if donald trump cared about that, you wouldn't be seeing the number at the bottom of your screen that says 220,000 american souls have lost their life. so john heilemann, we saw a spate of polls yesterday. looks like joe biden is doing

very well in the upper midwest. florida still close. i'm wondering we're about to go into the weekend and we'll have the final full week before the election. what are you expecting over the next week? what does joe biden need to do to put this away? what does donald trump need to do to save his campaign? >> well, i think we're going to see, joe, just on the ground, right, what are we going to see? i think, you know, to go back to what it seems like the trump campaign has been trying to do which is to try to replay 2016. you know, their attempt really has been to turn this hunter biden controversy into the jim comey controversy that's the game-changing, late stage surprise so the comey letter in 2016, hunter biden's hard drive in 2020. i think given where we are and the facts in the case it's very

hard to make the case -- trump is not making that case very well. they'll keep flogging that for sure. the wall street journal has looked at the matter and there's still questions about the provenance about it, and a lot of intelligence people think there was an illegal hack that may have been involved in this and that rudy giuliani and steve bannon are complicit in all of that. i just -- you know, i don't -- it's hard for me to see -- what was the combo for trump in 2016 was the comey letter which was a genuinely game changing thing along with trump's discipline at the end. those two things, his ability to not just be -- to stay on the economic message, draining the swamp, et cetera. in this setting you have a much less impactful story and one that looks like it may have no impact whosoever in the hunter biden email -- the hard drive story. and then you have trump last night, even though i said he was a little better in the first

debate, you still saw a little bit of a festivus quality to the debate, the airing of grievances and instead of doing what he did in 2016 staying focused on the economic and change message, all that trump is doing on the campaign trail as he did last night in the debate is air his grievances. talk about himself. not talk about voters. so i foresee that continuing for the next 11 days and i think the question for biden is, given their main concern right now which is don't let joe biden get covid between now and election day. if they're trying to make sure that joe biden stays safe, so he's not going to be out on the campaign trail as much as trump is, but their big task right now is not to let anybody in their coalition get complacent. willie said it before, 50 million votes are in, but the biden campaign is focused and they'll use barack obama and other surrogates to keep ramming home with their voters, don't think this race is over. don't stay home. don't let up. got to stay intense. we have to close strong here.

i think if the biden campaign can do that, with that combination of things, message on the air where they dominate right now with advertising, and with strong surrogate play, they can bring this thing home and they're going to end this campaign not guaranteed with a victory, but the clear favorites as we head towards 11 days out, november 3rd. still ahead, jon meacham was in the debate hall last night and he'll join us and plus, the president had some more harsh words for his former hometown. new york mayor bill de blasio responds when he joins us for a live interview. "morning joe" will be right back. ll be right back did you know you can go to libertymutual.com

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he never did a thing except

in 1994 when he did such harm to the black community and they were called and he called them super predators and he said that. he said it, super predators. and they can never live that down. 1994, your crime bill. the super predators. nobody has done more for the black community than donald trump. and if you look, with the exception of abraham lincoln, possible exception, but with the possible exception of lincoln no one has done what i have done. >> mr. president, you have described the black lives matter movement as a symbol of hate. you have shared a video of a man chanting white power to millions of your supporters. you have said that black professional athletes exercising their first amendment rights should be fired. what do you say to americans that that kind of language from a president is contributing to the racial strive? >> the first time i ever heard of black lives matter they were

chanting pigs in a blanket -- talking about police, pigs, talking about our police. pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon. i said that was a horrible thing. and they were marching down the street. that was my first glimpse of black lives matter. i thought it was a terrible thing. as far as my relationships with all people, i think i have great relationships with all people. i am the least racist person in this room. >> what do you say to americans who are concerned by that rhetoric? >> i don't know. i don't know what to say. i got criminal justice reform done, prison reform, opportunities zones. i took care of black colleges and universities, i don't know what to say. i mean they can say anything, and it makes me sad. i am the least racist person -- i can't see the audience because it's so dark but i don't care who's in the audience. i'm the least racist person in

this room. >> abraham lincoln is one of the racist presidents we had in modern history. he started off his campaign come down the escalator saying he'll get rid of the mexican rapists. he's banned muslims because they're muslims. he's made everything worse across the board. he says to them about the poor boys the last time, i told them to stand down and stand ready. come on. this man has a dog whistle about as big of a foghorn. >> he made a reference to lincoln where did that come in? >> you said you're abraham lincoln. >> no, usaid not since abraham lincoln has anybody done what i've done for the black community. i didn't say i'm abraham lincoln. i said not since abraham lincoln

has done anything for the black community. now, you put tens of thousands of black men mostly in jail. >> and that was the big exchange on race last night at the debate. let's bring in vanderbilt's rogers chair and the american presidency historian, john meacham. so you were there last night. i'll let you take exception with the blame from the president that he is the least racist person in that room. but we have been talking this morning about how it was actually sort of a normal, conventional debate that donald trump sort of observed and respected the rules put in place because kristen welker did a great job pushing things along. what did you think? >> i was there with my 12-year-old and she pointed out which i liked that when president trump said that biden wasn't really from scranton, she said is that like the whole

hawaii/kenya thing? is he trying to do a birther on pennsylvania? is that a sign of how important pennsylvania is? so i was proud of her. so once you get -- to get to belmont as you know you have to go past geist hall and the geist statute to get over to that part of nashville. >> as you all know -- >> i don't know if enough people know that willie is a member of the student media hall of fame at vanderbilt. hall of fame. >> thank you for acknowledging that. we don't need to -- just plow ahead with your analysis. thank you. >> look, i thought -- i thought that it didn't seem normal as a normal debate in the hall. what it felt like was donald trump is a talk show/fox news/oan performer and joe biden's running for president. right? and of course people are going to say that's bias on my part. but that really was the way it

came across. the president was louder. he was more hyperbolic. i love that the only time in five years he's ever been interested in an actual matter of fact was he was confused that biden was joking with him about being -- comparing himself to lincoln. that's the most detail donald trump has gone into on any issue in public since 2015. but one was running for a fox news slot and one was running for president. and, you know, the facts and the fair facts it wasn't a fair fight because you felt biden trying to adhere to reality. right? and you knew trump felt no similar compunction. and so that was kind of the -- i

never have been to a general election debate in person so it was -- i was interested to see what it would be. it was a more elemental experience if that makes sense. >> yeah. to your point on fox news, he was speaking -- president trump, in shorthand about the hunter biden story that you really would have to watch fox or read a certain website to understand what he was talking about as he walked through that. and i should clarify, when i say it was a normal debate i don't mean the content of the president's answers but just in comparison to the way it felt in the insane first debate. >> yeah. >> besides -- >> i think cameron joseph -- yeah. my friend cameron joseph of vice news, his headline from last night was donald trump used his indoor voice. but jon, joe mentioned that the lies from last night would normally be front-page material

for multiple publications this morning, but in some ways we're kind of used to it. do you think that's a media issue, that we -- that, you know, a lot of supporters of donald trump don't trust us, don't trust the people on the show right now. they don't trust "the new york times," they don't trust "the washington post." does calculating the lives mean anything if we're living in this incredibly divided world? >> i think it does mean something it's a great point and a great question. i think one of the strategies of authoritarianism and the people who amass power for the sake of amassing power is you numb people to the lie and to the truth and you live -- the president self-evidently, i watch the thing he posted of him with lesley stahl yesterday and then before the debate, and it's

remarkable how even the cadences of his grievances match up. all right, so this is -- to use an analog issue, this is a tape that's playing in his head all day long. right? the world is unfair to him, any criticism is off the mark. we don't understand, the rest of us are corrupt or obtuse. we just don't recognize his greatness or anything he's done for us. that's a dangerous place for an american president to be. there's a level of self-reference, a level of self-involvement, that i would argue is disqualifying. because it is a deficit, not just of dignity and decency. but a deficit of empathy and in a republic, empathy is essential. because a republic runs on our

seeing each other not as adversaries, but as neighbors. and that may sound high minded or soft, but that's a core element of how america has survived and often thrived. it's that we see each other as -- that our fates are linked. dr. king said, the way that the universe is structured i can't be what i am until you ought to be that's the kind of the nature of the kind of system that we have wanted to have and watching last night, joe biden is part of that covenant. donald trump is not. >> all right. john heilemann, thank you so much for being with us. we really do -- we appreciate it as always. thank you, john. john heilemann, the half

hearted approach that donald trump had sort of these half-baked lies, half-hearted approach that he had that he didn't even bother spelling out the conspiracy theories and the full lies that he's heard on other networks and on facebook, what's so fascinating is you brought up the point that he doesn't hate joe biden. you can tell on stage the way he hated hillary clinton. perhaps because she's not a -- he's not a woman. and also, he can't be painted as a liberal and in another world, a world before he decided to get into the republican politics in 2011, he would have voted for joe biden. these are the sort of people that he supported throughout his adult life and gave money to. >> yeah. i mean, it's funny, joe, right? you think about as the whole

belong project of donald trump trying to discredit joe biden which has largely not worked, i mean we saw polling over the last of the six months that joe biden's favorability has gone up. usually when they have taken the ads and the hits from the opponent you usually see them suffer them. their unfavorables go up, the favorables go down. and biden's have risen. he was underwater six months ago and now he's a little bit in the net positive area. so it hasn't stuck and part of what you have seen is, you know, remember when donald trump was going after biden for a long time. he wanted to say that biden was radical left. that was -- for a while that was the frame, biden is going to destroy the country because he's radical left but donald trump couldn't say that he was trump is biden left so he said that he's a puppet of the radical left but he couldn't say this guy is a socialist, right?

the same thing is happening now. like you think back to 2016 in the debates when trump would say something about hillary clinton like you should be in jail. there would be like a venom to the statement. he had just despised her and you just don't see it now on stage with him. there is this kind of wan quality, it feels phony and hollow when he expresses outrage about biden. i think that's the core of it. he doesn't hate him like he does hillary clinton and we talked about this before, joe biden is the kind of democrat that donald trump would support in an alternative universe. the kind he used to give money to before he became a republican of convenience. and i think it's in the end what you mostly see. somewhere in all of this, as you watch him, i think he knows he's losing. i never felt like that in 2016. even when he was losing i never thought donald trump always -- somehow he always thought he'd find a way and in the end with the help of the russians and the

help of jim comey me did find a way and you watch that guy on stage and you get to the end and melania walked up with him on stage, you thought that guy -- he knows. he knows. it's like some of those fat elvis performances we saw over the summer that were so lazy and disaleut. i think it's taking a lot of the life out of him as he heads into the final stretch. >> okay, jon meacham -- i'm joking. it's late, john heilemann. so john heilemann, thank you so much. you're right. his heart is not in it. and mika, another point of course something that donald trump and his supporters don't want to remember and of course it must be wonderful not having to remember the recent past. but donald trump considered himself a very good friend with

hillary clinton too. >> yeah. >> donald trump contributed to hillary clinton's campaign eight times and donald trump invited hillary clinton to his wedding and they got along famously. donald trump loved golfing with bill clinton, loved bill clinton, so the difference between joe biden and hillary clinton, hillary clinton's a woman. >> yeah. >> and donald trump's proven, one of the many thing he's proven over the past seven, six, seven years in public life, he cannot stand having his word questioned by a woman. willie? >> no. willie, it's so clear his heart wasn't in it. i think john heilemann hit the nail on the head. he seemed to be throwing things at biden but he didn't have them fully thought out in his mind. kind of throwing them out there, tipping back on his heels and

pursing his lips and going what do you think about that, joe? and you wouldn't at some point knew what he threw out there because he didn't know that much about the issue. whether it was on hunter biden or whatever. it's like his heart wasn't in it. >> yeah. there's no prep. there's never been any prep. he goes on instinct and wings out there, but when he goes on friendly media, if he does a call-in interview to fox business, that audience understands the shorthand about hunter biden but most had no idea what he was talking about he burrowed deeper into the narrative. to john's point about this not being 2016, you know, he's running against someone that he can't get his arms around. the president is. he's wishing it was somebody else and there was a moment on that last night when he started talking about socialized medicine and talking about bernie sanders as if bernie

sanders were standing 12 feet away from him and joe biden said this guy is confused. you're running against me, joe biden. i beat all those people in the primary, mika. i'm standing here, i'm not the caricature that you're painting of the democratic party. >> yeah. good point. and speaking of winging it, the topic of north korea came up last night. we'll talk about that after the break. night we'll talk about that after the break.

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all right. let's bring in the president on the council of foreign relations and author of "the world a brief introduction," richard haass. we'll set you one this exchange on north korea. >> you know what, north korea, we're not in a war. we have a good relationship. people don't understand, having a good relationship with the leaders of other countries -- >> we have a lot of questions to get to. >> we had a good relationship with hitler before a he in fact

invaded europe. the rest of europe. come on. >> okay, richard haass, take it away. >> -- not about good relationships. foreign policy is about results. and the problem for the president he kept saying he inherited a tough position with north korea, yes. the problem is a bad situation has gotten a lot worse on his watch. north korea has more nuclear weapons and more and better missiles. the former vice president biden laid out a path it's called diplomacy. you basically argue the path to pyongyang goes through beijing. almost all of north korea's trade goes out of the territory. only china is in a real position to put pressure on it and he said we'd go to china to put pressure on north korea and he didn't talk, by the way, he didn't put the emphasis on solving the problem through

summits or denuclearization. it's at least something -- that falls within the realm of diplomacy and foreign policy. it's a serious approach as opposed to the photo-op. >> donald trump's only argument last night seemed to be that he got along with kim jong-un and they had not gone to war. unfortunately, the consequences for the united states over the past four years have been grim. donald trump inherited a bad situation on north korea, but how much worse is it now four years later? >> it is considerably worse. north korea had far more nuclear weapons. their missile force is not just larger in number, but has added tremendous distance. the united states now faces what either/or is on the verge of being a strategic threat from north korea that our physical safety increasingly depends on the judgment of kim jong-un. and that to me is shall we say a less than optimal position.

the president, you know, talking about his personal relationship with him. but again, foreign policy almost -- the presidents tend to exaggerate, joe, and we did -- you know, fdr did it with stalin. we have done it with putin. it didn't pay off. i don't fault the president for trying it, though i thought his approach had no chance of working but the problem is when it didn't work he stuck with it as opposed to trying something serious. >> richard, my fellow giants fan, i promise not to ask you about daniel jones face planting in the ten yard line in a game they blew last night. you have 90 minutes, there's some angle to foreign policy that people would have liked to have seen last night. as you look at the stakes in the election that's 11 day, what's the most important foreign policy issue that divides the

two? >> there's an unlimited number and i fault the debate commission. the idea you had 10 or 15 minutes devoted to foreign policy, the half of which the president devoted to hunter biden, he's going to inherent an aggressive china, you have north korea who we just talked about. iran is breaking out of the 2015 agreement. you have venezuela essentially the government is entrenched. syria, the government is entrenched and this president wants to pull troops out of europe and south korea. so there's an unlimited number of issues. i actually think though, willie, what might be the most pressing national security issue and my answer might surprise you which is where the debate began and that's covid-19. unless the united states gets on top of covid-19 we won't have the bandwidth as a country, we won't have the political attention, the economic resources, the public support to act in world. so people need to understand

that covid is not just about health. not just about our economy. it's about our national security. that to me is -- if we get that resolved we get it managed then we can have a serious conversation about what it is we'll do in the world and that's why i more than anything work with allies. i think the unwillingness of this president to work with allies, the bias of vice president biden to basically say allies are a great strategic advantage for the united states. they're force multipliers to deal with every regional and global challenge that gets to the heart of the difference between the two men. >> richard haass, thank you very much for being with us. one programming note, if you and your family live in the middle hudson valley there will about croquet death match this weekend, between richard haass and fareed zakaria.

please bring your own pyms cups and good luck out there. god speed, my friend. >> thank you. >> i guess i need to not speak in shorthand like donald trump. last week, fareed accused richard of beingen a country squire and fareed lives on a country estate a mile or so away from richard haass. i'm sure they have croquet battles every weekend there. so shawna, let's speak about the debate. i think we spoke enough about croquet. how foreign policy was talked about and the most important issue facing presidents over the next 30, 40 years, america's relationship with china, it devolved into what had a bank there. whose son was negotiating with chinese business people in the government. and we've got very little

substantive information about how these two men are going to be managing that difficult relationship. >> yeah. i mean, sometimes especially these debates as good as a job as kristen welker did, did not lend themselves like the conversation you had with richard haass about foreign policy. but in the end, this isn't a moment that people have picked up on -- i'm changing the story from foreign policy, i'm sorry, by the stock market. and joe biden said where i'm from scranton, people don't live and die on the stock market that's not where their lives and moneys is invested.

i think most americans the gobbledygook about hunter biden and some of the gobbledygook about china as well that kind of goes over people. it kind of goes over me, but when you're saying that main street argument and that i hear you, everybody, and that this president does still have the ability to try to push through or help congress push through something for that main street that doesn't have as much to do with the stock market, i do people think hear that. and i don't think they necessarily are going to latch on to some of these conversations about does hunter biden have business in china, does joe biden have business in china. they are still worried a lot because of covid, a lot because people have lost their jobs about how they're gonna feed their families next week. i do think it's worth pointing out that moment from last night. >> yeah. so let's do this. shawna thomas, thank you so much. great job. but let's kick off the next hour

with that moment that shawna just referenced. >> the stock market will boom if i'm elected. if he is elected the stock market will crash. the analysts are saying that. >> very quickly. >> look, the idea that the stock market is booming is his only measure on what's happening. where i come from in scranton, the people don't live off of the stock market. just in the last three years during this crisis, the billionaires in this country made according to wall street $700 billion more. because that's his only measure. what happens to the ordinary people out there, what happens to them? >> let's bring in jonathan lemire, capitol hill correspondent and host of "way too early," kasie hunt. she never sleeps. donny deutsch is here and pulitzer prize columnist and

msnbc political analyst, eugene robinson. >> so jonathan lemire, from the associated press, you summed up the debate this way. with less than two weeks to the election, trump portrayed himself as the same outsider repeatedly saying he wasn't a politician and joe biden said he was an incompetent leader of a country facing multiple crises. in our peacock coverage last night, i brought up the articles you have written for some time about donald trump trying to run as an outsider. he kept trying to say you're all talk and no action. something that would be great if he were right now a reality tv host who had never been in the office himself and could say, i'm the one alone who can fix it. it's a hard argument when you're sitting inside the white house

and riding around the world in air force one for four years, isn't it? >> that it is, joe. obviously, congrats on the peacock coverage. eager to take part in that. but this is the fundamental problem that the president has faced throughout the campaign where he's still time and again, dipping back into the 2016 playbook. we saw a lot of it last night but part of it of course is trying to portray himself as someone outside the system. as someone who is not responsible frankly for everything that's happened for the last four years and that includes first and foremost the pandemic where he's never taken responsibility of -- for it. he's always tried to distance himself from it, point the blame at others, whether other governors or other nations, never questioning his own response. just in the last few days if he would do anything differently he said no, not really and the biden campaign has seized upon us. this is their fundamental argument. to go along with the idea that americans are just tired of this. that they're tired of four years of chaos, tired of four years of

fighting and perhaps not being as proud of their country as they once were. but they're suggesting that the president has failed in the biggest test of his term, leadership through the global health crisis that the nation has faced in a century. we saw the president again trying to dial it back to four years ago, with another predebate stunt news coverage. more attacks on the debate stage, calling biden corrupt, trying to make equations with hillary clinton. but we saw for the first time, perhaps in the whole -- in the whole campaign cycle heard some starkly different world views. both in terms of how these two men would have america be viewed upon the global stage, but also in major policies at home for immigration to health care, to taxes. but in terms of the politics of this it's simple. the trump people i spoke to in the immediate aftermath of the debate when they got off air

force one back in washington in the early morning hours they were pleased. they were glad he wasn't as angry and full of interruptions as he was about a month ago. he's running out of time. only 11 days to go. 46, 47 million ballots have been cast already. while he did well, so did joe biden and little suggestion that anything would have changed the trajectory of the race, a race that the president is losing with time running out. >> yeah, joe biden had a lot of strong moments. he said we're dying with covid and there was an exchange on health care. take a listen. >> pre-existing conditions will always stay. what i would like to do is a much better health care. much better. we'll always protect people with pre-existing so i'd like to terminate obamacare and come one a brand-new beautiful health care. >> we have to make sure we're in the situation that we protect pre-existing. no way he can protect pre-existing conditions.

none, zero. you can't do it in the ether. he's been talking about this for a long time. there is no -- he's never come up with a plan. i guess we'll guess the pre-existing plan the same day we get the infrastructure plan the way we've been waiting in '16, '19, '20. he hadn't done a thing for anybody on health care. >> kristen -- when he says option, he's talking about socialed medicine and when he talks about the public option he's talking about destroying your medicare and social security and bernie sanders tried it in his state. his governor was a very liberal governor. they wanted to make it work. >> okay. let's hear from -- >> it doesn't work. vice president? >> he's running against joe biden. i beat all of those other people because i disagreed with them. joe biden he's running against. >> if you listened to that

entire clip, mika, i mean, donald trump wasn't even completing sentences. i said both men seemed to be wrestling with the english language. again, following up on a point that other people have made this morning, i don't know that donald trump's wasn't -- his heart wasn't in it, but for a lot of the night he was -- he wasn't speaking in complete sentences. he was blurting out phrasing. his answer to the environmental question was just abs gobbledygook. >> and the lies he threw out were gobbledygook. >> again, he wasn't finishing sentences. he wasn't finishing thoughts. there were stretches where joe biden was also struggling. i don't think -- i don't think last night was a great night for

rhetoric in american politics. but it probably was a good enough night for joe biden given the fact that some people are actually claiming donald trump won handily last night. that is a grading curve. i wish i had had throughout high school, because i wouldn't have gotten as many ds in calculus and physics as i did. >> you know, i have been thinking about this all night and i think it was a great night for joe biden especially as you cut it down to clips and share moments of the debate for days to come. he starts off a little slow, but he caught on to donald trump very quickly and said we're not living with covid, we're dying with it. 224,000 people, a thousand people a day. there was this moment when they were talking about race and donald trump said something like i'm the least racist person or something, and there was this moment where joe biden just looked down and said, oh, god. it was good, it just sort of

separated him from the whole situation because it was just insanity and stupidity coming out of donald trump's mouth in the moment about separated kids. donald trump saying that they're well taken care of was as cringe worthy as it comes, but biden in that moment you could see him truly in pain for those children which we'll get to in a moment. and when he said that donald trump makes a dog whistle sound like a foghorn that was a good line and it happens to be true. these are one of many that came through during the night. while donald trump, kasie hunt, he played ugly and he played ugly really badly. it seemed to me like, you know, he didn't have enough information to really make anything stick to joe biden. if he was going to play ugly. so it was like playing ugly without the right tools and it seemed to fall flat.

but if you liked donald trump's performance, if you loved trump's performance, is this what republicans want to stand by, the clips that are coming out of this debate? >> well, certainly, mika, as joe pointed out there were definitely times when donald trump was hard to follow. i think there was a mention of sheets and pillows at one time that led us to scratch our heads and kind of wonder where the entire conversation was going. however, i do think -- don't ask me, joe. i don't know. the republicans i would say though are breathing a sigh of relief only because they feel like at least he didn't make it dramatically worse. in the first debate, that was certainly how everybody felt. the morning after, that this was a train that donald trump drove absolutely off the rails and not only is it going to be bad for him but everybody else in the republican party who is on the ballot coming up in november.

this time, he didn't do anything necessarily that made them feel like, okay, i have to come out and put out a statement this morning. i have to leak audio of me talking to my constituents about how awful donald trump is because we're maintaining the status quo here and the status quo is good for joe biden. i mean, that's what joe biden needed last night. i mean, obviously, you always want to try to make things better for yourself and improve your standing, but at the end of the day, the polling is in a strong spot right now for democrats, for joe biden, for democrats who are running in the senate. so that seems to be where we came out on this and really i think there were just so many nerves among republicans watching this, because nobody really had any idea what to expect and at the end of the day, they got the donald trump that they're used to dealing with. it wasn't any worse, but mika, to pick up on that moment that you mentioned about the children, i think that the president defending that policy to the biggest audience that

he's had likely, you know, in years, really is the kind of thing that women in particular and the groups of people that have been really turned off by donald trump are likely to hear very loud and clear. because, you know, that policy, when we first learned about it was as i think back in terms of covering this administration and from capitol hill, but also looking at what the white house was doing, that was a moment when people started to turn against the president. and we saw a massive repudiation of him across the map in 2018 that was largely driven by the suburbs and by the gender gap and that policy was a big reason why that started to happen. suburban women looked at that and said, what are you doing? this is horrible. to actually stand on the stage and defend that i think makes a big problem that he already has in this presidential race worse for him.

>> and it wasn't much of a defense. he talked about the facilities being clean. let's watch that moment again. kristen welker asked the two candidates about this news this week reported out by jacob soboroff and julia ainsley from abc and others that 545 children separated from their parents at the border can't find their parents -- the government can't find their parents to reunite them. >> do you have a plan to reunite the kids? >> yeah. a lot of them come out without the parents, they come over through coyotes and through gangs. >> joe biden, quicks upon. >> the 500 plus kids came with parents. they separated them at the border to make it a disincentive to make it to come to begin with. we're really tough and strong and get what? they cannot -- it's not coyotes that didn't bring them over. their parents were with them. they got separated from their

parents. and it makes us a laughingstock and it violates every notion of who we are as a nation. >> let me ask you a follow-up -- >> kristen, they did it, we changed the policy. >> we did not separate the -- >> they built the cages who built the cages, joe? who built the cages, joe? >> let's talk about what we're talking about. what happened? their kids were ripped from their arms and separated and now they cannot find over 500 sets of those parents and those kids are alone. nowhere to go the. nowhere to go. it's criminal. it's criminal. >> let me ask you about -- ten seconds. >> they are so well taken care of. they're in facilities that were so clean. >> facilities that were so clean after being separated from their parents. let's bring in jacob soboroff, the author of the book "separated inside an american

tragedy." jacob, good morning. i was thinking about you in that question -- when that question was asked about thinking about julia ainsley as well. you two have reported so deeply on this over the last couple of years. you have been down to see the facilities. help us sort through what the president said there. >> well, the president lied last night like he's lead about the separation policy all along. the separation policy was a uniquely trumpian policy and put forward by the administration in a way that the administration had never done before. it was torture, it was government sanctioned child abuse, according to the american society of pediatrics. he invited the reporters down to see the facilities where they were so well taken care of, i was one of the reporters. what i saw was not that at all. i saw children sitting on concrete floors, covered with by mylar blankets, supervised by security contractors in a watchtower. it was -- it makes me sick. as i said last night every

single time i recall it and the children were there only because they had been taken away from their parents by donald trump. the 545 kids that he's sort of dismissed as coming with coyotes last night is preposterous. they were taken from parents, they were warned if they were taken from the parents they wouldn't be able to find them and they'd be harmed for a lifetime and they did it anyway. >> going back into some of your reporting this week about where the kids are, because there was no plan. the question was, what is your plan to reunite these kids with their parents? he didn't have an answer because there is no plan. the government is not even working on that part of it. it's been outsourced to sort of nongovernment groups. so how do we get these kids back together with their families? >> well, the answer as i sat on the status conference call yesterday with the court case between the aclu and the government and they don't know at this point. those 545, two-thirds of the parents have likely been deported without their children and there is a door to door

ground surge going on in central america that has been outlined by many news organizations including kqed in the bay area, our colleague antonia hilton did an extraordinary documentary for vice. they called them the unreachables because they can literally not find the parents and hhs warned if they did this, it would harm the children. dsh, they warned that the i.t. system wasn't ready and they would lose the parents just like they have and we reported and as did the new york times a couple weeks ago that the doj warned against separating young children because they wouldn't be able to find their parents and the trump administration, the political appointees in all of the departments ignored this. they put forward this policy and the results -- i hate to say this, but were entirely predictable. the same results that the president lied about on the debate stage last night. >> jacob, a moment from the president in the discussion that's playing well with his supporters is when he turned to joe biden and said who built the

cages, joe. there are of course photographs of cages during the obama administration. what's the truth about that part of it? >> that is true. the obama administration did build that facility. i was inside that facility, the mcallen central processing station in texas. the reality is i write about this a lot in my book, donald trump would not have been able to separate thousands of children and damage them psychologically for a lifetime if it were not for punitive based immigration based policies that spanned george w. bush, barack obama who deported more people than ever before. and the big challenge for those who are watching this closely and affected by this last night is if there's a joe biden administration, is he going to move forward or going back to the policies of the obama administration? which did not include wide scale separation but did include in policies that immigration rights

advocates, immigrants will tell you are very harsh and you know in their words were violating the likelihood of these immigrants. >> msnbc's jacob soboroff, great to have you with us this morning. thanks. gene, you're writing about this in do we tolerate the kidnapping of the children? this election is our chance to answer. what did you make of that moment, that the best that donald trump can come up that the facilities that the kids live after we separate them from the parents are clean. >> it was jaw dropping, it really was. i mean, i did write my column, i wrote it before the debate. but i wrote about this issue thanks to jacob and julia's great reporting. but of this tragic situation, these 545 kids, it was all very predictable.

they can't find the parents. this is -- it just stuns me that this is the united states of america that did this and the donald trump administration did this very deliberately knowing, having been warned, they wouldn't be able to reunite the families. but as a demonstration, as a horrible show of force that other -- that other would-be asylum seekers were supposed to learn from and were supposed to be deterred by. it was just an awful thing and to hear the president just very cavalierly defending it and saying that, you know, the facilities were very clean and this and that, it was just -- it was incredible. it was good to see biden's outrage and his emotion because that's certainly the way i was

feeling. i think that's the way that a lot of people who paid close attention to this issue would have been feeling last night. it was -- it was a pretty stunning moment in a debate that otherwise was i think clearly one by our kristen welker who did a terrific job as moderator and actually got them to answer some questions and so we got to see the contrast between these two men. >> you know, donny deutsch, we joke with you a good bit, but you're an advertising legend and a marketing and branding guru. i'm curious your thoughts on last night's debate and whether it changed. the branding for either of these have been enough to change the trajectory of this race in the final 12 days.

>> if you look at the brand essence of each man on display last night in the most simplistic kind of human terms it was anger versus empathy. you know, if you watched -- if you turn off the volume and you watch with no sound and you felt donald trump did not smile once during the debate. he was hunched over. literally there was not a smile in 90 minutes. he was completely joyless, whereas obviously biden it was -- he was standing up straight. there was a smile, there was the warmth. there was the empathy. it was a scowl versus smile. it was anger versus empathy. no more articulated than we talked about as far as the kids in cages and one guy you felt him feel it at home and the other guy there was nothing there. it's a simple question. after you watch that debate, who do you want to invite into your living room for the next four years? and i think americans are just -- i said this the last time i was on the show are just tired of the anger.

and it's just -- if i look at the history of elections in the last 50 years the most likable candidate is always who people invite in and, you know, yes, substance aside and the substance aside was in biden's favor particularly starting and beginning and ending with covid, and 225,000 people dead and going in the wrong direction. i think that set the tone for the entire debate. the other thing joe biden several times -- many times looked at the camera, looked at people. donald trump never connected with the audience once. he felt like a loser, and he felt defanged, like he didn't want to be there. if you roll back to the 2016 debates, yes he was angry and mean, but there was an evil joyousness to what he was doing to the attacking hillary clinton. there was none of that last night. i felt in knowing the man as i do, i felt him feel and understand that he was losing.

so to me though, the brand essence to answer your question, anger, empathy, smile, scowl. >> you look at his body language yesterday, look at it walking off the stage last night with melania trump and you are right. turn off the volume. look at how these two men presented themselves to america. it really was telling the difference between both of them. so willie geist, over the past several years i have been reading joan diddy moore -- i have been doing a lot to get through the last two or three or four years, and it doesn't make sense. it's not the country grew up. not the church i grew up in.

not the conservative movement i grew up in. so earlier this week, i forced mika to sit down and watch the 2017 netflix on -- the documentary on joan didion did, and taken from famous poem, slouching to bethlehem. i wrote the words down last night because i think they were written in 1965 and they actually -- they apply today far too much. and apply to what americans thought of -- his supports in 2016. this is when she was writing about john wayne. in a world we understood early to be characterized by ba naturalty and doubt he suggested

another world. one which may or may not have existed ever, but in any case existed no more. and willie, those voters like directors like john ford when they looked at john wayne, will voters when they looked at donald trump may have sensed as joan wrote of wayne, into this mold might be poured the inarticulate longings of a nation, wondering at last at what pass the trail had been lost. you know, picking up on jonathan lemire's theme from last night, willie, donald trump presented himself as the john wayne type figure that could bring america back to that long, forgotten place. and four years ago, he told

americans assuredly i alone can fix it. believe me would punctuate every sentence. what do you have to lose he would tell americans, and that is just a message, willie, underlying what lemire had been writing about for a long time, that's a message that doesn't hold the same strength with as many americans in 2020 as it did four years ago when he was debating hillary clinton. >> well, i'm not going to try to say it any better than joan didion, you have inspired to crack your magical thinking when i get off the air today, but no question about it. when he was running in 2016 he was -- he could make the case an insurgent. he was he could make the case an outsider. he was many people in this country believed a successful business man who was the guy in the boardroom just getting things done. he was a guy who was going to come and shake up washington and

change the way business is done. he still last night four years later is trying to pitch himself as that guy. the problem is the country has now watched him on the campaign trail for 5 1/2 years as president for 3 1/2 years and they know it's not true anymore. a bunch of people still believe it that's true. by some of the people who people who took a flyer on and said, i don't like politics, i don't like washington, i don't particularly like hillary clinton maybe this is a guy from the board room who's going to see go shake things up and they have watched what happened to our country and are living in the middle of a public health crises that is touching everyone's life. whether or not you lost somebody, you may have lost a job, your child is not doing well because they're staying home on a commuter trying to go to school. our lives, everyone, republicans and democrats, have been touched by his inability to handle the crisis that has changed the country. that has shaped the country.

he cannot pitch himself as he tried again last night as the outsid outsider. he's not the outsider, he's the ultimate insider, he's the president of the united states. >> he has shown that he's someone who plays someone that he said he was. he's a actor who doesn't have the credibility or the accomplishments over the past four years to now back up what he's saying. coming up on "morning joe," former senator claire mccaskill and plus, trump called new yorker city a ghost town last night and said restaurants were dying because of coronavirus restrictions. mayor bill de blasio may have something to say about that. he joins the conversation ahead on "morning joe." on "morning joe.

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specifically on this exchange on climate change where joe biden said he would transition away from oil in the u.s. in favor of renewable energy. something president trump pounced on. >> would he -- would you close down the oil industry? >> by the way, i would transition from the oil industry. >> that's a big statement. >> why would you do that? >> because the oil industry pollutes significantly.

if you'd let me finish the statement because it had to be replaced by renewable industry over time and i'd stop giving the federal subsidies and you won't give them to the gas -- excuse me to solar and wind. >> yeah. >> why are we giving it to the oil industry? >> we give it to solar and wind and that's the biggest statement in terms of business. that's the biggest statement. >> okay. one final question. >> he's going to destroy the oil industry. will you remember that, texas? will you remember that, pennsylvania, oklahoma? >> vice president biden, let me give you ten seconds and i have to get to the final question. >> he takes everything out of context, but the point is, look, we have to move toward a net zero emissions. the first place to do that is in the energy production. by 2050 totally. >> claire, aside from acting like an annoying eighth grader, donald trump did talk about certain states that may respond to biden's answer. how will they response, do you think, voters in texas, et

cetera? >> well, i think biden will have to do more to explain the transition process. but if you look at polling, mika, i think a lot of people don't realize one of the most popular parts of biden's platform is in fact this conversion to green energy and the jobs it will create and that's way up there on his list in terms of being popular. people know what's going on with the planet. people have now begun to realize that we are facing a crisis that's existential. so the notion that biden is being thoughtful and honest about the need to transition off and that means not leaving anyone behind. overall i want to say this about the debate. you know, this was about trying to convince undecided voters and solidifying the voters you have and joe biden did both of those, by trying to unite the country constantly. by showing his empathy and by

not lying every other line. and if smears -- you know, trump's whole campaign has been personal attacks against joe biden and joe's favorability is higher than any other nominee in recent history so those are not working. they won't work last night. the people who are trump are still for trump and those for biden are still for biden and for the tiny undecideds, i think joe did some good last night. >> joe scored the debate and he's got a score that might surprise you. but jonathan lemire, give us a follow-up on the conversion to zero net carbon emissions and also whether you expect donald trump to go heavy on the message in the final week and half in pennsylvania and texas? >> no question of that, joe. we got into this debate last

night with donald trump having -- facing real deficits in the national polls of course but even stubborn -- even the smaller ones in the battleground states and the rule number one for his camp was to do no harm and i think he avoided any gaffe. but the trump team, people i talked to, late last night and early this morning say this is the statement they'll try to exploit. biden's promise to transmission out of the fossil fuel industry and they already cut an ad that went up online and the president was telling people on air force one he feels like -- even though it came in the final minutes was the most significant for their side. but certainly, with pennsylvania being the number one state on

the map, we have talked about it all campaign that both sides think that's the electoral college tipping point state this is the message that the donald trump team will hammer on. >> it's pretty funny that president trump is going to win back suburban women by propping up the oil industry. and defending federal subsidies to the oil industry. we'll see how that goes. hey, james, fascinating report card you have here and you touched on something that i said last night and again this morning, that both of these candidates at times wrestled with english language and let's face it, the english language got both of them in a headlock. you said this, biden has struggled to put together, sentences, coherent discrepancitions but many of the

sentences are garbled. it reminds me of what i said about donald trump as well. if you just looked a donald trump talking about health care, he had about four or five sentences that he just didn't bother completing. he would just blurt words out. so it is -- this was still a debate unlike many other debates in american history because both of the candidates at times were fairly inarticulate. >> that's true. there's so much heading into the debate and after this debate that is just baked in. no one is voting on that particular debate. you either like donald trump or don't. you either like biden or you don't and remember 40 million americans have cast a ballot. so you want to do what donny deutsch suggested, turn off the sound and look at body language.

if you're going for a substantive poll, you knew the topic, you know as a voter how you feel and what they said was sort of hard to even understand. and so, look, overall did the debate change fundamentally the race, probably not. >> yeah. you said you gave biden a c-plus. i was laughing because, yeah, at times unless you understood what was going on, what the subplot was for a lot of those answers, somebody new to politics would be baffled by their responses again from both sides. so you gave joe biden a c-plus. donald trump a b-minus. but said how ever good his performance was donald trump's, it probably was not enough to change the campaign. talk about that really quickly. donald trump, what did he do right? what did donald trump do right last night? >> well, we should explain. those grades are based on who do you like and who's going to win

but it's based on two factors. how did the candidate do in their performance and did that do what they needed to do in the context of the campaign and biden did not have as jonathan have that major gaffe that would end the trajectory of him winning. but donald trump did perform better. one of his best debate performances we have seen in -- well, obviously, he doesn't debate that often but one of best political moments of 2020. did it make a huge difference? i mean, maybe he can, you know, stem the tide in texas or some of the republican states that appear to be heading in to biden's way. remember, it's not that he's convincing undecided voters to go his way. but he's trying to convince republicans not to leave him and go towards biden. >> well, that's a great point. and donald trump of course, the grading curve is very high because donald trump has been a historically poor performer, so poor on substance that he usually resorts to attacks but

still, voters -- republican voters liked what they saw in 2016. many did not like what they saw in the first debate and he actually drove some of his traditional supporters away. it will be interesting to see if he pulls some of them back after last night. i think he will. i think it may cause the race to tighten a bit. not a lot. but might cause the race to tighten just a little bit. we have breaking news, willie. of course on the coronavirus. mika showed me the breaking news, the numbers. once again, proving just how tragically wrong donald trump is on the coronavirus quote going away. >> yeah. the president said during the debate last night that we're rounding the turn, exactly the opposite is true. this is breaking news just in to nbc news. according to our nbc data, the united states reported a record number of new daily coronavirus

cases yesterday. on thursday. more than 77,000 new cases were reported. that breaks the previous record set in july of nearly 76,000. so the worst single day in terms of cases since this began in the united states and claire mccaskill, that's why if you watched the first 15 minutes of the debate, donald trump looked so out of touch with the united states. talking about it going away, talking about rounding the corner. the reality in people's lives is that number that we just put up on the screen. >> yeah. it's a head scratcher to me that the trump campaign has not even tried to address this crisis. it is front and center in everyone's lives. it's like the campaign can't meet people where they are. joe biden is doing that. he knows that people whether it's struggling with their kids, learning at home, whether it's losing a job, whether it's a loved one that's on a ventilator

in an icu unit, whether you're a first responder that sees the never ending stream of people now getting hospitalized in this country, it's fascinating that donald trump continues to say it will just go away. no, it just won't go away and clearly, they have not had a plan. clearly they have not had a guidelines. at the top of the list is his steadfast refusal to embrace the basic premise of masks and that's what most americans see. i think the covid is surging in red areas, in my state, it's not surging in the blue areas but surging out in rural areas that have very little health care facilities available to them. this is going to make a big difference in this election and donald trump is kidding himself if he thinks it won't. >> well, gene robinson, these numbers, the daily numbers, the daily death toll, a thousand a day. i mean, the stories go on and on and on.

you can shout it from the rooftops. this president did not have plan. he missed it from the get-go. he spoke behind the american people's backs to bob woodward and said it was deadly, it was airborne, it was going to kill a lot of people. and he didn't tell the american people the truth. he didn't mobilize the defense production act. he didn't get a mass mobilization of masks or testing. he did nothing. i'm sorry, the one thing i would ask whether i was joe biden or kristen welker was sort of an extension of the column that you wrote this week and it goes beyond why isn't he trying to make, you know, people better. why isn't he trying to fight the coronavirus. does he want people to die? does he want people to die of the coronavirus? i ask in all seriousness, because he's not pushing for universal mask wearing. he refuses to say i'm for masks.

sure, people can wear masks. no, as president you're the example. you're the leader who can send the most powerful message to the american people and to the world and he won't do it. he refuses. and it goes down the line on every level. undermining his scientists saying that dr. fauci is a disaster. not following the guidelines and holding super spreader events at the white house. this is crazy town. and if anybody has a hard time handling donald trump it's because he's flying around with lies and conspiracy theories and childish antics on stage while tens of thousands of american people are set to die because of him. that's the bottom line. gene robinson, fact check me. >> well, mika, your facts are absolutely right. the most breaking single moment

in the debate for me was when -- talking about the virus, you know, we're living with it and joe biden said no, no, people are dying with it. and that is the truth. trump has given up on the coronavirus. he has simply given up. and, you know, on a day when we had the record number of cases, i look at these figures every day as i'm sure you do. it's not just the 77,000 cases and the more than 1,000 deaths, but hospitalizations are on a steeply rising curve. which is just one of the worst signals you can have of what this winter is starting to look like. and because when hospitalizations rise, health systems come under unbearable pressure and begin to crack and

we're starting to see that in places like the dakotas, and the upper midwest where there's this incredible surge of the virus we're going completely in the wrong direction. and i think people know that because this is their reality. this is our reality. we don't go to our offices. we most -- most of us do wear masks a lot of people's children are at home because the schools can't open. it's -- this titanic failure, dealing with this pandemic is the central fact of life for most americans right now. and it's why life is different from what it was a year ago and while life will continue to be different and potentially worse and worse as this winter goes on unless we take the measures we

know would work, will work to address this virus starting with mask wearing and the president still rejects us. he still engages in magical thinking. you know, the corner on the day we have the highest number of cases ever, and by the way, it was not the highest number of tests ever, so you know, once again his equation of, well, more tests therefore more cases is completely wrong. people know this because people live this, and this is maybe the one fundamental problem that trump has in this election. he can't escape it. >> so kasie, the president's plan is to wish it away, but congress is talking to the white house, so secretary mnuchin. speaker pelosi was on with us yesterday saying that she holds out hope there could be a deal before election day on a giant stimulus package to help all

these people who are suffering with their health or with their employment. what is the latest? is that a realistic expectation that there might actually be a deal on the horizon? >> i think hope for that is fading fast, if the sun hasn't already set on that, willie. the reality is that the politics of this have just, again and again, made it hard for the parties to figure out an agreement. they were, i think, probably the closest a few weeks ago when the president tweeted that he wanted to shut it all down, and that really rocked the negotiations, set them back significantly, and they really, while the president has then turned around and said, okay, i want to do this, and i want to do it fast and bigger than what democrats want, it has not recovered enough. and the house speaker talking to her members, you know, i don't think they want to take a risk and put their votes out on the line before the election if the

senate majority leader mitch mcconnell isn't going to also move forward. you know, pelosi's a veteran of deals like this. she's done a lot of them. she's done a will the lot of th republicans, and on something like this where people have to take what is potentially a tough vote, something that could come back later and be a problem, her strategy has been to hold hands and jump off the cliff together, right? like that's what they did during the financial crisis back in 2008, and that's what they've done at other points as well. and right now it's just so hard for them to come together. and the other piece of this that's such a problem, too, is that it is a slow moving crisis. i mean, we are hearing from the federal reserve increasingly loud alarm bells, that the original legislation kept millions of people out of poverty, kept the economy floating along, but very slowly these job losses are becoming permanent. things are getting slowly worse. congress doesn't react well to anything that happens slowly. it is the worst possible kind of crisis to deal with, and joe

knows this better than anyone i'm sure. if there is a huge blaring crisis in front of you, congress can get something done. they did it back in r march. the deal that after the election we might get a deal between pelosi and mcconnell, if president trump loses does anyone think he's going to act like -- i don't see any guarantee he would sign it. that's certainly in the spect fi tive phase at this point. >> the sun may be setting on it. donnie, let's turn the corner now from the debate. we've got the debates, only two of them in the books now, which puts us right in the home stretch. 11 days until election day. what would you be saying to joe biden's campaign if they reached out to you and said what do we do here? they've done pretty well so far. we haven't seen a ton of him, especially this week. they said he was in debate prep.

donald trump has taken the opposite approach, doing his old school rallies. joe biden had president obama out on the stump for him very effectively in philadelphia the other day. what do you think the next 11 days look like? >> covid, covid, covid. the fact that we now are six months into this and we have a worse state. look, this supersedes everything else. he's been a wartime president. he's lost the war. more people who live in the city of reno or the city of fort lauderdale were completely wiped out. that's how many people have died here, and we're going to have another couple hundred thousand by the end of the year and tens of thousands between now and election day. that's it. that's it. this president lost. he didn't protect us. covid, covid, covid. >> another couple hundred thousand people don't have to die. that doesn't have to happen. if this president actually did the basics here. we're not even talking about hard stuff where you have to think really hard and

complicated and navigate congress. no. basics. masks. hey, how about not traveling the country and holding super spreader events so people pass the virus along to each other and die from it. when's the next one? i think it's in new hampshire on sunday. super spreader events. this president is going around the country and spreading the virus. it is crazy. and yes, it is hard to be shocked every single day, but you know what? this is where we are. hundreds of thousands of people will continue to die from the coronavirus in part because this president will not promote the basics that could save these lives. donny deutsch, claire mccaskill, eugene robinson and james bindel thank you all. coming up, we'll talk to a democratic mayor in a red state, atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms will be our guest. - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven.

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i have released all of my tax returns, 22 years, go look at them. 22 years of my tax returns. you have not released a single solitary year of your tax return. what are you hiding? why are you unwilling? the foreign countries are paying you a lot, russia's paying you a l lot. china's paying you a lot, and your hotels and all your businesses all around the country, all around the world. >> i prepaid millions and millions of dollars in taxes, number one. number two, i don't make money from china. you do. i don't make money from ukraine. you do. i don't make money from russia. you made $3.5 million, joe. and your son gave you -- they even have a statement that we have to give 10% to the big man. you're the big man, i think. >> there's a reason why he's bringing up all this malarkey. there's a reason for it. he doesn't want to talk about the substantive issues.

it's not about his family and my family. it's about your family, and your family's hurting badly. if you're making less than -- if you're a middle class family, you're getting hurt badly right now. you're sitting at the kitchen table this morning deciding we can't get new tires, they're bald, because we have to wait another month or so, or are we going to be able to pay the mortgage, or who's going to tell her she can't go back to community college. they're the decisions you're making in the middle class families i grew up in. they're in trouble. we should be talking about your families. that's the last thing he wants to talk about. >> well, they were just a few of the many moments from last night's debate, and you know, mika, i feel compelled to say just at the very beginning that, again, as bob woodward said in our coverage last night, there were so many lies that were said by donald trump, but none of them more personal than the lie that joe biden made $3.5 million

from ukraine, and he kept going on speaking as if it were fact. i thought it was interesting after the debate "the wall street journal" posted an article. they looked and looked at all the information and, in fact, donald trump was lying last night, but he lied to tens of millions of people. there was never a china deal that was completed, and joe biden, again, according to "the wall street journal"'s investigative reporters had nothing to do with it, but he did that throughout the debate last night. the question simply is this, will it work? >> the new format definitely allowed for people to really see that strategy on his part. it was, willie, a contentious debate, but let's just take a moment and talk about kristen welker just for a second because she really did lead these candidates through a very fast-paced discussion. there were times where donald trump ran over here, but i think they were actually more cringe worthy because it was very clear

what the rules were, and she was as good as it gets. >> she was great. she was great. this is hard to do as many debate moderators have proven, and they have proven again this year, and she kept it under control. you could see, actually, that president trump respected the rules, respected the forum. >> tried to. >> that kristen welker was holding. just in this case, he doesn't generally respect them, but he did with her. in fact, he stopped in the middle of the debate after a week of attacking her in a very ugly way and attacking her family, and said i think you're doing a very good job handling this, and then after on the stage he was seen leaning in to her saying that was very professional, you did a good job. so not the most important part of the night, there's a lot of substance to talk to, but this actually looked like something we didn't think we'd see with donald trump during a presidential debate. it looked normal. it looked like a conventional debate, and they actually had a conversation about some issues, and his attempts to go after joe biden and hunter biden fell flat to most people, and as you say,

joe, "the wall street journal" came out just minutes after the debate ended actually, and kind of systematically debunked the story. >> it's friday, october 23rd, we're up early after a night covering the debate on peacock, which was really fun, along with joe, willie and me, we have msnbc national affairs analyst, co-host of show time's "the circus" and executive editor of the recount, john heilemann, and nbc news and msnbc contributor, shawna thomas is with us this morning. >> so john hieilemann your take on the debates last night. >> you think about these two debates, i think quaalude trump is better than crystal meth trump, you know, from the last debate. >> wow. >> that was like an improvement. i think it's like -- >> get the benefit of jon meacham being here without jon meacham being here. who could ever forget when he

talked about the crack head part of thomas jefferson's second administration -- but go ahead, quaalude trump. the quaaludes, if we're going down that road, they wore off about an hour 15 into the debate. >> they did. he needed one exare tratra lude him through the whole thing. quaalude trump was still not that great. joe biden did his best debate performance of the 2020 cycle. i think, you know, he is best one on one. i think his previous best to date performance was his one on one against bernie sanders. i thought last night biden was clear and on point and making his arguments and did not tire as he sometimes has also in some of these debates. was strong, i thought, throughout. i thought the point i think, you know, given the setup around the hunter biden thing, you guys

pointed to the wall street journal article that debunked it. they set it up. it's been all week long. this is what trump was going to do. they brought their fact witness, so to speak, the guy, tony bubalinski or whatever it was to hold a press conference before the debate, like the clinton accusers, that guy refused to take questions at the press conference. when they got to the debate stage, it's not just that there were no facts there as it turns out after "the wall street journal" debunked the story, it was also that trump's lack of preparation really came through. those hunter biden hits are complicated, right? and trump was not well-versed in them. it sounded to me like gobbledygo gobbledygook. it was just gibberish coming out of his mouth. you're the big guy he said to biden, and you didn't really understand that. unless you're in the fox news bubble already, you didn't understand a lot of things trump was trying to say. if you think about the other major thing -- and i have many

more points to make about this debate -- what's the main issue in this election? covid. the fact that donald trump's eight, nine months into this, he still doesn't have a good answer on his failures on the virus and on the one thing that he has a decent story to tell on, which would be the rapid development of the vaccine, we're not there yet but everyone acknowledges it's moving pretty well. all he says is project warp speed. he never explains that to anyone. you listen to him and you're like wait, what's he talking about? lack of preparation. the negative hits don't land. even the places where he might have a positive story to tell, he doesn't tell them well. i think there's no basic -- what you needed if you're donald trump in this debate was to change the dynamic of the race. he's behind, joe biden's ahead. did the fundamental dynamic of the race get changed? it did not. it's status quo anti as we head into the last days. >> if you look at the reaction from a lot of the people watching from those that we spoke with, most people thought

the debate was a wash. there were some polls that were taken after the debate. they got published earlier this morning, but most people thought that we spoke to that the debate was a wash. a lot of biden people thought joe biden won. there were a few who thought that donald trump had a good night, but shawna, there were two moments i'm curious whether they will play a role in the last 12 days of the campaign. i've noticed at least among my friends that support donald trump, the evangelicals even who support donald trump, children in cages is the moment that they cringe at, and they can't even justify. they can't even blame that on nancy pelosi or aoc. it is a real achilles heel for donald trump among some. among some of his supporters. i thought the exchange last night was brutal with joe biden

talking about the 500 plus children separated and donald trump saying, well, they're living in wonderful conditions. then on the other side at the end, i think it was a mistake, i think he made it because he was tired. joe biden just blurting out that he was going to do with the oil industry. of course he was speaking in shorthand to something that he's been saying for quite some time, but i'm wondering whether we see that in ads in pennsylvania and texas for the next 11 days. >> i think the trump campaign has to take whatever they can get out of this debate and use it, so yeah, if they're smart they will put that in an ad. whether it's in context or out of context, and that's something that vice president joe biden is going to have to clean up a little bit, i think, but you know, i think that also may speak to a lot of the supporters that he has. i mean, i don't think this debate -- and you all have already said this -- i don't think this shifted people that much. president trump needed to show up and basically say, hey, i'm

giving people who are still on the fence, as few undecided as we know are out there, but i'm giving people who are still on the fence a reason to vote for me. people who are on the fence about vote at all for him who already are conservative and like some of the conservative policies, he needed to give them a reason to actually show up and vote because we have seen some long lines in early voting and on election day there will probably be long lines all across the country, and i'm not sure he did that. i'm not sure joe biden did anything to turn anyone off or turn anyone new on either. i just think we're coming out of this kind of -- kind of status quo. i think that the moment about kids in cages and the immigration policies that have gone on that are still going on and are still problematic from this country, the problem with that was we didn't get that thing that we keep talking about wi with president trump, which is this idea of empathy. when joe biden kind of turned to the camera and said, you know, everything is about like families and he went back to

that empathetic thing that we expect from joe biden. and you know, president trump just didn't -- didn't experience that. he didn't say those things. and i think those people that you're talking about, joe, the evangelicals and other people who still really want to support president trump just want to know that he feels a little bit of something when it comes to something as crazy as kids in cages and 500-plus children who we don't know where their parents are anymore. and that isn't similar, necessarily, to what happened in 2014, which is what president trump tried to bring up, the migrant crisis that the obama administration had to deal with. and they didn't deal with it that well, but i also think trying to turn that entire conversation about these like very individual children who we don't know where their parents are and it is the american government's fault into a hit about 2014 didn't really land, which sort of speaks to what john heilemann was saying

earlier, but it didn't land because it's one of those things that a lot of people in america don't know as much about, don't necessarily remember, and that sort of speaks to a lot of the hits. it was really hard to understand them. i had to look up the joe biden brother thing, and i actually covered the obama administration from the white house, so kind of a wash last night. but kristen welker did an amazing job. i had to throw that in. my girl pulled it off last night, and i am so proud of her. >> absolutely and so are we. still ahead, president trump attacked new york city among other places last night during the debate. we're going to talk to mayor bill de blasio straight ahead. "morning joe"'s co is coming ri back. ♪ ♪

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we're learning to live with it. we have no choice. we can't lock ourselves up in a

basement like joe does. he is the -- he has the ability to lock himself up. i don't know, he's obviously made a lot of money someplace, but he has this thing about living in a basement. people can't do that. by the way, i as the president couldn't do that. i'd love to put myself in the basement or in a beautiful room in the white house and go away for a year and a half until it disappears. i can't do that. >> he says that we're, you know, we're learning to live with it. people are learning to die with it. you folks home will have an empty chair at the kitchen table this morning, that man or wife going to bed tonight and reaching over to try to touch their -- out of habit where their wife or husband was is gone, learning to live with it. come on, we're dying with it. >> and he wants to close down -- he'll close down the country if one person in our massive bureaucracy says we should close it down. >> vice president biden, your response. >> simply not true. we ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. we ought to be able to safely open. >> and we're fighting it, and

we're fighting it hard. there is a spike. there was a spike in florida and it's now gone. there was a very big spike in texas, it's now gone. there was a very big spike in arizona. it's now gone. and there are some spikes and surges in other places. they were soon be gone. >> here's the truth about that, over the past week in florida, there have been an average of 2,986 cases per day, an increase of 26% from the average just two weeks earlier. in texas, at least 99 new coronavirus deaths and 6,426 new cases were reported on october 21st. over the past week, there have been an average of 5,444 cases per day, an increase of 16% from the average two weeks earlier, and in the state of arizona, an average of 898 cases per day over the past week, an increase of 55% from the average two weeks earlier. those stats according to the "new york times." so joe, this has been -- >> i'm sorry, go ahead.

>> just for eight months, this has been the approach. it's shocking to see it in the last presidential debate effectively the same case that he's been making since february and march is that it's going to go away. we're going to wish it away. we're rounding the corner. if he closes his eyes and covers his ears, hopefully when he opens them, it will be gone. there's no strategy and that's the case joe biden made last night. >> and in years past and every presidential campaign of our life, if a president lied, forget about all the times donald trump lied. he lied about the laptop. he lied about the deal. "the wall street journal" proved that he was lying about it, and he lied about these spikes. he said this spike has gone away in florida. you just showed numbers proved that's a lie. the spike just went away in texas. you just showed numbers that proved that was a lie. he claimed the spike had ended

in arizona. you showed numbers that that proved a lie. in campaigns past if barack obama or mitt romney had done this in 2012, there would have been full page, front page articles not only the "new york times" but "washington post," "wall street journal," "usa today" everybody would be showing the clips and proving that one of those two candidates lied. here donald trump lies dozens of times at least in the debate, doesn't get the facts wrong because that happens sometimes with candidates. he just out and out lies, and it's just become accepted by 45, 46% of the population. it's an extraordinary thing. what's so extraordinary, willie, is that i grew up in a washington where republicans

tore off their robes and put on sack cloth and ashes for six months and whipped themselves in the back because bill clinton once said it depends on what the meaning of "is" is. my god, what a devolution this republican party has made. >> they've built it into the cake. this is who he is, what do you want us to do about it. i would just suggest that learning to live with it is not a strategy, and people are learning to live with it in the short-term. they're getting their kids through school online. they're trying to figure out how to make ends meet, but they don't want to do it indefinitely, and the way we're going right now without a plan, it's headed that way. >> and up next, we'll bring in one of our resident medical experts for more reaction to the president's false claims on covid. and as we go to break, a note that joe's new book "saving freed freedom: truman, the cold war, and the fight for western

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♪ let's bring in infectious disease physician and medical director at the special pathogens unit at the boston university school of medicine, dr. na heed bedelia. she's an nbc news and msnbc medical contributor. we've been watching this from the political perspective. i'm curious what you thought watching the debate last night from a medical and public health perspective. >> well, willie, good morning. i think that i was hoping at least to get some acknowledgment from the president about the fact that we are at the precipice now of the trend that we've been worried about with the fall and winter. you mentioned the increase in cases. almost 40 something states are

reporting increase in hospitalizations, you know, and their increase is not just we know how this goes, cases lead to hospitalizations. hospitalizations lead to deaths. well, 20 something states are also reporting increasing deaths over the last 14 days, and so we're in that period that we've been worried about, and when americans go out today, you know, during the last two weeks before this election, they're making two types of choices. they're making the choices at the polls. they're also making the choices in their life, you know, in terms of do i wear a mask or not. you know, do i go to this crowded indoor gathering or not, and the type of stance the president has continuously taken saying this will go away, it's confusing part of our population to the point that they're not being able to -- there's also pandemic fatigue, and this is driving home additional confusion that's leading people not to take the steps they need to take to keep themselves and their families safe. that's the biggest concern, and

last night that type of disinformation that we can just go back to normal, that there will be no consequences i think is actually driving us closer to having a lockdown. if we continue down this road and don't buckle down and do the type of steps that vice president said, which is balance economic opening with, you know, potentially decreasing the cases then we're rushing headlong closer into scenarios where health systems get overwhelms and we have to consider more extreme choices, which i hope we never get to, but last night didn't help. >> so doctor, at 224,280 deaths so far, a death rate of a thousand a day, joe biden brought up masks, and the president's lack of leadership on that part meaning he doesn't say everybody should wear masks at all times. you must wear masks. they work. would those numbers be down, and would it be significant if the

country was on a full-on mask wearing mandate? >> mika, i think that studies have shown that widespread use of masks help decrease, you know, cases and then we've seen that from experiences of states, arizona, saw a 75% decrease after public health measures and mask mandates went into place, and what we now know is that it's not just the 220 something deaths that you talk about. the cdc said there's access mortality. more people have died this year than what we can account for on top of that 220 something, an additional almost 300,000, 66 e percent of which could be attributed to covid. that number is even higher. we're just getting some sense of how big this pandemic is. we're not even getting an impact of the secondary impact on our health systems. the masks would help. the way that this administration

has confused this issue with even not just president trump but other parts of his covid task force, dr. atlas speaking out against masks which has then driven this divide where other members of the covid task force such as the surgeon general had to take to twitter to say, no, masks are necessary. why do we have to have these discussions? you know, eight, ten months into this pandemic for this country, this is the easy part. the harder part would have been to have a national pandemic strategy, which of course we also haven't worked on. >> yep. >> thank you once again for being on the show with us this morning. coming up on yesterday's show joe asked democratic strategist james carville this question, and carville didn't miss a beat. >> 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. >> up next we'll talk to the

mayor of georgia's biggest city when atlanta's keisha lance bottoms joins us straight ahead on "morning joe." ♪ said he's going back, going back to find ♪ - [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. ♪ since pioneering the suv in 1935, the chevy suburban has carried many things.

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never did a thing except in 1994 when he did such harm to the black community, and they were called and he called them super predators, and he said that. he said it, super predators, and they have never lived that down, 1994, your crime bill, the super predators. nobody has done more for the black community than donald trump, and if you look with the exception of abraham lincoln, possible exception, but the exception of abraham lincoln, nobody has done what i've done. >> abraham lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we've had in modern day history. he pours fuel on every single racist fire, every single one. started off his campaign coming down the escalator saying he's going to get rid of those mexican rapists, he's banned muslims because they're muslims. he has moved around and made

everything worse across the board. he says about the poor boys, last time we were on stage here, he said i told them to stand down and stand ready. come on, this guy is a dog whistle about as big as a fog horn. >> i'm going to give you ten seconds to respond. >> he made a reference to abraham lincoln, where did that come in? >> you said you're abraham lincoln. >> no, no, i said not since abraham lincoln has anybody done what i've done for the black community. >> and i'm saying -- >> i didn't say i'm abraham lincoln. i said not since abraham lincoln, has anybody done what i've done for the black community. now, you have done nothing other than the crime bill, which put -- >> oh, god. >> -- tens of thousands of black men mostly in jail. >> oh, my gosh, just joe biden in pain at the level of the conversation. joining us now from debate site in nashville, the mayor of atlanta, keisha lance bottoms. mayor bottoms, so he says

there's no one who's done more for the black community than him. what has president trump done for the black community? >> well, he's put us on the receiving end of covid-19, and he's given us the highest death rates in the nation. that's what he's doing for the black community right now, and i can tell you as an african-american sitting in that audience, i was incensed that he would have the gal to even compare himself to abraham lincoln. you can't help but wonder does he really believe what he's saying or does he want us to believe what he's saying? but at the end of the day, what i saw on that stage last night was a man who reaffirmed the reasons that he's not qualified to be president of the united stat states. >> how did joe biden do last night? or i'll put it this way. what were his strongest points, and what were his weaker moments? >> i thought that he did a great

job last night and what struck me was the empathy and understanding that he showed last night. when the question was asked about african-americans and their experiences, he went into great detail because he understands. he talked about the difference in someone making $300,000 a year and someone wearing a hoodie and being treated the same, and i know that from personal experience because my husband's been profiled as a shoplifter before, and i was so moved at his level of understanding and his empathy. i thought he did a great job last night. he spoke directly to the american people. he was the adult in the room once again, and he reminded people of his experience and also his vision. donald trump doesn't have a vision for this country as a leader, as an elected official, if i spent every day talking about four years ago, i'd get thrown out of office.

all donald trump does is talk about his slights, his personal perceived slights. he doesn't offer us anything for the future, and it's the reason that we are in the midst of a pandemic right now in america when countries across the globe have been able to turn the corner on this. >> mayor bottoms, it's willie geist, appreciate you coming on again this morning. i want to ask you about your state of georgia. you know, for a long time now democrats have said it will be a swing state someday, but we're not quite there yet. georgia hasn't gone for a democrat in a presidential race since '92 when it narrowly voted for bill clinton, but poll after poll we've seen in the last several weeks has it in the margin of error for joe biden against donald trump. so what are you seeing? what are you hearing on the ground, and do you think it's a winnable state for real for joe biden this year? >> i definitely think the numbers are there. we saw that in our last gubernatorial race where there was a 55,000 vote difference.

a lot of that was driven by the number of african-americans that are registered in the state of georgia, and what we're seeing thus far is a record turnout. the question that remains to be seen, are all of these early voters people who were going to vote anyway and they've just shown up early, and what i've said repeatedly is just so remind people not to fall for what happened in 2016 where we thought we had it in the bag and people thought their votes didn't matter, every vote counts. we still need people to show up. we had glitches the first few days of early voting, surprise, surprise. that's the story of georgia. i was a bit concerned when i went to vote a few days ago that there was no line. so i think part of that is because many of the glitches have been worked out, but again, democrats have to show up because the numbers are there in georgia. we can solidly turn georgia blue, but we're not going to be

able to do it by staying at home waiting on someone else to do it for us. >> however it goes in your state, mayor bottoms, it's likely to be a close race if you believe the public polling. donald trump has signaled that he's willing to go to court to challenge the outcome of this election if it is close, he's already called the national election a rigged process. so what do you all have in place in the state of georgia. i know you're not the governor, but you're the mayor of the biggest city to help ensure that it is a fair count and that the result that we see is the right one. >> well, we are encouraging people, again, to show up early if you feel comfortable showing up to vote, show up early, make sure that you have a plan to vote so that if you can't vote on that first day that you show up, there's an opportunity for you to come back. in the city of atlanta we have given employees eight hours off to volunteer at their polling places. we've also given employees four hours off to vote anytime

between early voting and election day. so we're doing all that we can on the local level, but at the end of the day, we have a republican-led state, a republican secretary of state, and it's no secret that they don't want this state to go blue. but we're encouraging people to remember the lessons we learned from congressman lewis and ct vivian and joseph lowry, all of whom we lost this year, that it wasn't easy, and they sacrificed a lot, and they were uncomfortable, but they stayed the course, and that's what we ow owe it to our children to do the same this year. >> jonathan lemire with the associated press has a question for you, mayor bottoms. jonathan. >> mayor bottoms, another complicating factor, of course, for in-person election day voting is the pandemic, which we are seeing coronavirus cases surge across the nation. i was hoping you could give us an update on what you're seeing in your city. what is the current rate of

infections? what sort of spikes are you seeing, if any, in atlanta, and is the city equipped in terms of hospital capacity and otherwise able to handle what's coming? >> well, you know, that we saw a spike several months ago. the governor and i had a very public fight about a mask mandate. the governor ended up dropping the lawsuit that he filed against me personally mandating masks. i truly believe that's been helpful in our state because in savannah, augusta, athens, columbus, cities throughout georgia, local leaders are now mandate that their communities wear masks, so that's been helpful. that being said, we are starting to see our numbers go up again, not where they were a few months ago. we are -- our public schools have decided to continue with virtual learning in the city of atlanta, so we're continuing to monitor it because we know how quickly this can turn.

but we've been holding steady, but we are seeing an uptick like the rest of the country is seeing. >> all right, atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms, thank you very much for being on the show this morning. we appreciate it. we have this development from the airline industry. southwest airlines announced yesterday that they will start fully booking flights and unblocking middle seats ahead of holiday travel citing scientific studies that show a lower risk of getting covid-19 on an airplane with everyone wearing masks, the airline made the decision to meet expected demand. one study cited from the international air transport association showed that out of 1.2 billion airline passengers who traveled during the pandemic, only 44 cases have been confirmed. the iata stated that the 44 cases is roughly one case out of 27 million passengers about the same odds of being struck by

lightning. while southwest's announcement might unnerve some travelers, the airline does have a flexible change policy to be able to rebook flights without paying a fee. southwest's decision comes just after the company reported its biggest ever loss. up next, new york city mayor bill de blasio will be our guest with his plan to combat voter intimidation on election day. and as we go to break, this programming note for all the soccer fans out there, tomorrow chelsea takes on manchester united at 12:30 eastern on nbc. we'll be right back. ♪ - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven.

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and run it like one of his businesses. i know people were looking for that kind of change, but it's not working. you know, we've only gotten more in debt, we have this virus now out of control, people out of work, no healthcare. how is that helping people? we need someone that knows what they're doing, and i think it's biden. i know he will listen to the experts. that's what we need. i trust him 100% to get this under control. he has the capability to bring us back together. i'm joe biden, and i approve this message.

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they all endorse yes on prop 25. to end unfair, unjust, discriminatory money bail. governor gavin newsom and van jones. they're voting yes on 25. the western center on law and poverty. the dolores huerta foundation. californians for safety and justice. and the california democratic party. they all agree that the size of your wallet shouldn't determine whether or not you're in jail. so, vote yes on prop 25. 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. dying, joe. you can't do that to people. you just can't. take a look at new york and what's happened to my wonderful city for so many years. i loved it. it was vibrant. it's dying. everyone is leaving new york. >> joining us now, the mayor of new york city, democrat bill de blas blasio. mr. mayor, we've got a lot to talk about. let's start right there. i've been to new york recently. it's not a ghost town, but people really are struggling. a lot of people are leaving. a lot of apartments are vacant. but the reason for that might be something that's lost on the president. where do you say new york city stands now amid the challenges from the coronavirus, the economy and how do we move forward? >> thanks for the question, mika.

look. new york city is fighting back. new yorkers have been heroic during this crisis. and we were once the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis. we have fought the disease back. our school system is open. 1600 public schools open in new york city. 10,000 restaurants and outdoor dining. jobs are coming back. it's going to be a long road, but new yorkers are proving this vibrant city is going to come back strong. and the only ghost town, i say, the only ghost town is going to be mar-a-lago after this election when donald trump is forced into retirement there. this is just a pitiful attempt by the president to undermine the notion that everyday people are going to fight back this disease because he failed to. he's literally putting the burden, he's putting the onus on the people who are suffering but are still fighting back rather than acknowledging his responsibility because he wasn't here for us when we needed

testing or needed a stimulus for the recovery. he's been missing in action. >> you mentioned schools. here's the president on reopening schools last night. >> i have a young son. he also tested positive. by the time i spoke to the doctor the second time, he was fine. it just went away. young people. i guess it's their immune system. i want to open the schools. the transmittal rate to the teachers is very small. but i want to open the schools. we have to open our country. we're not going to have a country. you can't do this. we can't keep this country closed. this is a massive country with a massive economy. people are losing their jobs. they're committing suicide. there's depression, alcohol, drugs at a level that nobody's ever seen before. there's abuse, tremendous abuse. we have to open our country. i've said it often. the cure cannot be worse than the problem itself. >> yeah, mr. mayor, new york

city has been pretty successful as it pertains to opening schools so far. but something joe biden brought up in his response to that was that schools really need the financial support to put in safety measures. and that that, you know, hasn't come from president trump. how are new york city schools faring in terms of being able to have ventilation systems, social distancing guidelines. are there protections in place for new york city teachers? >> yes, absolutely, mika. look, i was a public school parent myself. so i want to be clear. it was imperative to get it right in terms of health and safety. so we looked around the world. we looked at every standard that worked, every rule that worked, and we took them all and combined them into a gold standard. so every child, every adult wears a mask all the time. kids don't go to the cafeteria for lunch. they eat in their classroom. a typical new york city classroom now has about ten kids in it. used to have more like 25 kids

in it. social distancing. crucial. ventilation, absolutely. we make sure that every classroom is ventilated properly. if it can't be, we don't use it. constant cleaning. when you layer all those measures on much to each other and testing, testing, testing. we test constantly in our schools. we found an incredibly low rate of positive cases in our schools but you're right. that takes a lot of resources. and we've made it a real priority in new york city. i thought bringing back our cities, our kids needed it. our families needed it. folks who need to get back to work. kids who have had the toughest time, families that have gone through the most pain need school the most. we have to fight those disparities in our society. public education is part of that. but we had to do it safely. we didn't have the federal government helping us. if we want schools back and our economy back, we need a stimulus. but here's the greatest fallacy of all in what donald trump said. hasn't lifted a finger for a

stimulus. he says, oh, my old new york. he hasn't helped new york or any other state. if he called for a stimulus, the republican senate would have gone along. he never did the work that a president should have done in this crisis. >> mayor de blasio, it's willie. good to see you this morning. it's obviously not a ghost town. i live there. i work there in new york city. i know. but if you walk around, there are a lot of mept store fronts. your favorite diner might be closed. a lot of shops have been closing. apartment buildings half empty in some cases and people have this air of inevitability that we're going to go back into where we were this winter just because of the nature of the virus and flu season coming as well. so what have you learned as mayor from march, april, may, let's call it, that you can apply this winter to hopefully get us through this better so some of those restaurants can stay open?

>> such an important question. we learned the hard way. we went through so much pain. but new yorkers really out of that experience found a lot of discipline and strength. and so now you see in the city, people wear those masks. it's not perfect but the vast majority wear those masks, practice the distancing. and we have tough rules. we had a problem in some neighborhoods in brooklyn and queens. we worked with the state of new york, put tough restrictions in place to stop that spread and we've seen it work immediately when you have to apply some restrictions. tactically, you can do it. but overall, the city is doing really well. one of the lowest positivity rates in the whole country. we have seen this sustained. it really comes down to the people. and i think this is another thing the president doesn't understand. leaders are supposed to inform the people, educate, inspire the people to be their best selves. new yorkers have responded by really showing the strength and the discipline and the people are -- who are sustaining us.

so, no, we're not seeing a second wave in new york city. and we are fighting back any indication that might suggest even the beginning of them. if we see even a beginning of a second wave, we hit hard at that. so i'm feeling very good that we can get through this winter strong. >> and finally, mr. mayor, getting ready for election day, a lot of questions surrounding how that's going to go. you're setting up what's called the election observer core. can you tell us about that? >> clearly president trump has tried to discourage people from voting. suggested the election results will not be legitimate. some of his followers clearly have been practicing intimidation tactics around this country. we cannot have this. so for new york city, and i say this for every city and country, we have to have the voter protection program. on election day we're going to have hundreds of lawyers, city

officials, volunteers all out there protecting the vote. they see any instance of intimidation, any effort to stop people from voting. and we know where this is going to be targeted. it's where it's always been targeted in lower income communities, in immigrant communities where people of color live. that's where intimidation efforts have been over the years. we'll have a strong voter protection effort because you cannot let this election be stolen by intimidation. >> mayor bill de blasio, thank you for that, and thank you for coming on this morning. good to see you. and just moments ago in indiana, vice president mike pence cast his ballot joining the nearly 50 million americans who have already voted early in this election. president trump intends to vote early in person when he is in west palm beach tomorrow. that's according to the white house. jonathan lemire on this friday,

getting a thumbs up from mike pence and his wife. your final thoughts. >> well, we also, the democrats have not announced when they -- when or where they'll be voting. the expectation is joe biden will do so in person on election day in delaware. kamala harris expected to do so absentee. as we head into this weekend after the final debate, i think it shows the degree of the campaign schedule, how much the president recognizes he's behind. it's a full-out blitz of rallies over the next few days. two today in florida. he's got three -- three tomorrow in north carolina, ohio and wisconsin. new hampshire sunday. and then three more in pennsylvania on monday. perhaps the most important state on the map. one they need and one they'll hope to gain momentum from last night's debate on his comments about the oil industry. >> 11 days until election day. the debate in the rear-view mirror. the story that matters is the breaking news we reported just a short time ago that yesterday in

the united states, according to an nbc news tally, we had the largest number of new cases ever breaking the record from july. that's the story people are living with. the president wants to continue to talk about hunter biden's laptop. he may, but coronavirus is where the country is. >> yeah, and i think jonathan lemire just laid out the next three days, it's about nine superspreader events planned by this president. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it is friday, october 23rd. we've got a lot to cover. let's get smarter. this morning, america is waking up with just 11 days to go. 42 million votes already cast. and one very big question. did last night's debate do anything to change the race? one thing is for sure, it was a far cry from the absolute mess we saw a few weeks ago. there was no fighting,