i'll see you over there. good morning. and welcome to "morning joe." it is tuesday, august 3rd. joe, we've got a lot going on today, including breaking news from tokyo. >> we do. and willie and i, speaking of tokyo, back last night on the red eye, we were one of these old timers, synchronized swimmers that were gold medalists in the late '80s. >> you still fit in that bathing suit, joe, very impressive. i don't know what they call it nowadays -- >> speedos. they're still speedos. >> willie and i crowd favorites because we did the 1988 games. it's all a blur, summer of love and all of that. we have breaking news items lining up. i know we wanted to stay for another day of fun and festivities but had to come back

because big breaking news, of course, wrongly convicted, deeply misunderstood, former governor of illinois rod blagojevich, the man who consider himself the mandela of our time is actually suing so he can run for office again, willie. it's the end of "horton hears a who". just a little sound from the distance of hope. maybe someone is there to save american politics from itself. >> there's a name you haven't heard in a while. he said on our set, ten years ago, saying i'm the abraham lincoln of our time, they're throwing me in jail to get children health care. we previously laughed but maybe in our political time line he'll be back. >> great. >> we have breaking news you can see it on the bottom of the

screen. simone biles, on the balance beam, just won a bronze medal. the four-time olympic gold medalist considered the greatest gymnast in the world, 24 years old, with drew from all the events until today when she said she would participate in the events despite having what's known as the twisties, hit her routine well, a couple of wobbles but goes home with a bronze medal from the tokyo games where she has been the focus despite not participating until today. we are following several developments around the coronavirus this morning. the biden administration reached its goal of getting 70% of american adults at least one dose of a covid vaccine. but covid cases across the country are still on the rise.

and hospitals in many areas are once again overwhelmed. nbc news correspondent miguel almaguer has more. >> reporter: as the crisis deepens at hospitals in hot spots the numbers are staggering, our nation has again recorded over 100,000 infections in a single day. the delta variant filling icus and killing more americans from week-to-week. >> if you get sick with the delta variant we estimate that you could infect about five other unvaccinated people. more than twice as many as the original strain. >> reporter: though it comes nearly a month after the president's fourth of july goal, 70% of adults are at least partially vaccinated. but every day more breakthrough infections are reported. senator lindsey graham now in quarantine said being fully

vaccinated kept his symptoms from being worse. >> even with a high vaccine effectiveness, most of the infections are going to be asymptomatic or mild. >> reporter: with daily infections predicted to double by fall, some hospitals are already seeing a surge worse than before. a federal disaster team is arriving in louisiana where there's an icu bed shortage, lines for testing stretching hours in florida after the state set a new record for cases. >> they're asking for the vaccine now, they want to get it. now they have to wait until they get better and get out of the hospital. >> reporter: hoping to boost inoculations in new jersey, the governor said workers like those in nursing homes must be vaccinated or face weekly

testing. the mayor of new york pushing for businesses to check vaccination cards for customers. more now on what's happening in florida. the state has become a new epicenter for the virus. florida. as cdc shows that new case numbers there make up nearly a fifth of all new u.s. cases. let's bring in the president and ceo of jackson health system in miami-dade. carlos magoya. i'll start by asking how many cases, patients you have in the jackson health care system compared to say two weeks ago and how bad is the situation in florida overall? why is it this bad? >> well, we are -- at jackson we are 230 patients, relative to where we were four weeks ago, 50 patients so almost five fold of the number we were. the only good news is we're 45%

from the peak from last year. miami-dade county is the most vaccinated county in all the state of florida, 78% of our population vaccinated. still 350 to 400,000 people unvaccinated. 230, by the way, all but seven are unvaccinated. and the seven patients that are vaccinated are transplant patients that are compromised. so really we are 100% vaccinated. the difference between this year and last year is that last year it was a south florida surge, palm beach had the issues while the rest of the state was not that much. now it's the rest of the state. definitely a correlation between hospitalization and low vaccination rates in the individual counties. >> so if you take out the people you say with underlying conditions, the unvaccinated

make up 100% of the people that's in your hospital right now. can you help us out, because we've been reading every day headlines, florida makes up 20% of the covid cases in america. around those numbers. that still seems to be the case. can you -- do you know why? have you heard any good operating theories on why the situation in florida is so bad right now? >> yes, what i said before, if you look at places like jacksonville, duval county, and clay county, they were -- they still are 43, 48% vaccinated. they're suffering. and the rural counties in the northern part of the state with less than 50% vaccination are having a higher infection rate and higher than last summer. in south florida we're seeing milder numbers, the numbers are

not as big as last summer because we have a higher vaccination rate. >> there's been talk about whether or not there should be mask mandates in florida, that conversation is happening in cities and states across the country. governor desantis saying he's not going to mandate masks inside of schools. what's your view on kids, should they have to wear masks in school this fall? >> we've been at the masking for 18 months and there are a lot of people that are aggressively against masks. yes, masking does help and obviously it's important to be able to wear masking wherever possible. but the number one answer we're trying to focus on, our single message, is about vaccination. hopefully we'll have vaccine for kids under 12 soon and i hope when that happens we'll vaccinate as many as possible. and we're al 78%, we need to get higher to be able to continue to reduce that. we're 90% delta variant, finding

new variants from other parts of the world and the infection rates are high. the only answer is vaccination. >> all right. president and ceo of jackson health system in miami-dade carlos maygoya, thanks for being with us. i wanted to ask you, willie, and also you mika, you and i, willie, will be sending kids back to school pretty soon. i think i'm in maybe a bill different position than you only because jack has upper respiratory issues at times. mom and dad are going to be telling him wear a mask until a lot of this clears, even though he's vaccinated. just because, as we heard from the doctor, people who are completely healthy that have the vaccine usually have any significant symptoms. what are your thoughts about

mask mandates and kids getting back in school and whether they should be masked or not? i'm still up in the air with it. though i've always said, you know, safety first. it seems to make sense, at least in the beginning part of the fall to mask them up if this delta variant is still whipping around all over the place. >> it depends on your school and what age kids are in there. as carlos just said, the kindergarten through fifth or sixth grade, under 12 years old, in other words, they're not vaccinated. if you're k-5, k-8, k-12 that's a different calculus because you have half the school that's not vaccinated. but for the older kids hopefully they can get back in school without masks. but it is the story of the country where we had this celebration almost in june, i think we've done this, we can get back to school, back to life

in the fall, boom here comes the delta variant and all of a sudden that changes the dynamics to where a lot of schools are saying, we announced in june or early july that school is back, fully normal, no mask, no distancing, we did it, kids are back. but now they're pumping the brakes saying this delta variant scares us, have kids wear mask at least in the early stages of the fall. teachers in new york are already pushing back, though, against a possible vaccine mandate by the governor here. governor cuomo suggested on monday that teachers should be mandated to get the vaccine if cases rise. the union wrote back, we have been advocating since the beginning of the year that any educator who wants a vaccine should have easy access to one. weld support local efforts to encourage more vaccinations such as through programs that require

that those who are not vaccinated get tested on a regular basis. what we have not supported is a vaccine mandate. that's the new york state united teachers union saying we don't support a vaccine mandate. vaccine if you want it, testing should be mandatory, though. that's the position of the union. >> it's a position ever bit ridiculous as if a pilot or flight attendant, i'm not going to take a vaccine or health care workers. health care workers taking care of senior citizens deciding not to take the vaccine, it's ridiculous. the teachers unions have been whining for the past six, nine months we're not going back to class until you give us vaccines. and then they get -- have the chance of getting vaccines and now they're saying, wait, no. we don't want the vaccines. we don't want the mandates. stephanie rhule wrote this, the teacher's union fought against in-person learning last year

because of health risks now they don't support the one thing that will definitely minimize the health risks. andrew ross sorkin. teachers whose entire professional mission is to educate and keep kids safe won't require the vaccine among themselves. this after the union didn't want teachers in the classroom for nearly a year. let that sink in. i've been saying it the past month or two, you can see this coming. just like my law professor, professor peerson said, you should be able to see this coming like a freight train out of the mist. it's coming at you. the teachers who complained and used it as an excuse, you can say it now because they've shown their hand. we can't go back in the class. your kids have to stay at home and do distance lerners. these parents they want us to be baby sitters for their kids.

we can't go back to the class because of the vaccine. now saying don't make us get vaccines. you can't make us get vaccines. it's ridiculous. i'll be really honest, my kids, willie's kids, your kids if they were still in school -- >> they are. >> -- they'd be okay. it would be tougher socially, but academically, we have the means to take care of our children we did it with tutoring and extra help on the outside because it's a little harder to learn. but it's the truly disadvantaged the kids from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, from working class backgrounds, who were the ones who fell furthest behind last year and they'll fall further behind this year h, and there are kids with mental health challenges that need to be in classrooms. i'm not talking to the teachers unions right now. i'm talking to the leaders.

the people who have been elected to lead. they need to have the mandate. if you're a teacher and you want to teach in front of class of kids, you need to get vaccinated. and if you don't get vaccinated, you need to leave school. i mean, you want to do your distance learning somewhere else, you do whatever, but kids need to be back in school. and there have to be safety precautions for those kids that are too young to get vaccines right now. and each school can individually decide the best way to do that. but unless a teacher has a medical condition that prevents him or her from getting that vaccine, they all need to get vaccines or they don't need to teach. >> here's the thing that is we've learned. there's science played out here, not just science given to you by the scientists that know the

facts against the conspiracy theories that float around on social media and facebook and all of that. the facts have played out. the numbers show that if you're vaccinated, your chances of dying from covid go way down to practically zero. if you are unvaccinated and you get covid, you could end up in the hospital. all those in the hospital, 99% of them are people who are unvaccinated. now, if you're in a state like florida, which is number one right now in covid cases and is experiencing a surge and you have a governor who's saying we don't need mask mandates in school, when you have a delta variant that is ripping through the population in the south and hitting younger people even children, even babies and killing them with the delta variant, and you are saying you don't need mask mandates in your school, you're completely out of

step with what is right and what should be done to protect your population. if you go to your neighboring states in the south, you have governors pleading with people to get vaccinated. saying what needs to be said. i can't teach you common sense. you need to get vaccinated. begging people to get their vaccine. and yet in florida, it's a party? in florida -- >> no, well -- >> -- you don't really need a mask if you're a kid. i don't think so. i'd put a mask on my kid if i was sending them to a florida school. >> you have had ron desantis say several times people need to get vaccinated. it is too early for any governor to make a blanket statement on masks. for instance, again, as willie said, the children that i think most of us should be concerned about are those too young to get the vaccine. those who are right now, i believe, under 12. those are the ones that need to be taken care of. >> that's correct. >> i guess, you know, willie,

this is the thing that drives me crazy about this discussion. it always has. we have said the same thing, follow the science, follow the science. sometimes the science changes because the virus changes. >> because people don't get vaccinated. >> the virus has a variant, it moves, it's a fast moving game and you have to be agile and able to adapt to it. two months ago it looked like the science said no masks. a lot of people didn't get vaccinated, the delta variant flew through the united states we're needing to adjust there. there can be no hard, fast rules for all 50 states because some states have been vaccinated, have higher vaccination rates than other states but this idea i'm always going to be against a mask mandate or for a mask mandate without looking at the science seems a little bit ridiculous right now. >> and wearing a mask in school is a pain and it's uncomfortable and it's not fun. but what's worse, as you say, is

learning from home for another year. where so many kids fall through the cracks. so many kids, millions by the way, not thousands, millions of kids have lost contact with their kids. they 'not going to school, not participating in any way. so whatever it takes to get kids back into classrooms, i think most educators, teachers would agree is best. also we should point out there are very low numbers we learned this the last year, you talk about learning and growing and figuring this out. there's no indication that schools were big vectors of transmission. the schools, when they went back in, they didn't become superspreaders. so we know more than we did a year ago that schools don't spread disease and we got the thing through the miracle of doctors and science, we got this miracle vaccine that should allow our kids to be back in school, allow our teachers to be safe so you would like to think

the teachers would want that for themselves and also for the kids in the country. there's a new report that shows breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths are extremely rare among those who are fully vaccinated against covid-19. according to this report those fully vaccinated show an infection rate well below 1% in all reporting states. the rates of deaths among fully vaccinated people were effectively zero. during a white house briefing yesterday, cdc director, rochelle walensky looked to drive home that message. >> the delta variant is highly contagious. to put this in perspective. if you get sick with the alpha variant you could infect about two other unvaccinated people. if you get sick with the delta variant we estimate that you could infect about five other unvaccinated people. more than twice as many as the original strain. in all of this, there is still good news. our vaccines are working to prevent severe illness,

hospitalizations, and deaths. >> so, joe, that's what we're underlining here, we hear the headlines of breakthrough cases and there are, people vaccinated and getting covid-19, but as rochelle walensky pointed out there, if you get it and you're vaccinated, most of the time you're asymptomatic but certainly in almost all cases don't get sick enough to be in the hospital or die. we were talking earlier about senator lindsey graham who announced yesterday he did get covid-19 despite he's been vaccinated. but his symptoms are mild, he'll isolate, and he said he was grateful he had the vaccine, encouraged everyone to get it. because although he has covid-19 now he doesn't feel sick and will not be put in the hospital. >> that's important. >> willie, as you know, every

new york yankee this year decided they were going to get covid. they got covid, got through it. i exaggerate slightly. garrett cole it appears has tested positive. we'll follow that news. this is what lindsey wrote yesterday. it was important for lindsey to write this, and we're grateful he did. i feel like i have a sinus infection and at present time i have mild symptoms. i will be quarantining for ten days. i'm very glad i was vaccinated because without vaccination i'm certain i would not feel as well as i do now. my symptoms would be far worse. an important message -- >> for that state. >> yeah, for that state. also an important message that what you were just talking about a minute ago and what we saw in the package. and that is, the odds of getting sick, really sick, after a vaccination are so low, they're

extraordinarily low. i think you have more of a chance of dying of a bee sting or a lightning strike i think i read in "the washington post." than you do of dying after getting a vaccine. and that's important to remember. and it's also important, mika, to remember how many people have got the vaccine. we met the 70% threshold joe biden was looking for, is that 175 million, maybe 180 million americans. and we all know, most of us know people or we've heard a story, somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody who also had a reaction to a vaccine. which again, the more people that take it, the closer we get to 80%, 90%, the more stories we're going to hear. but again the odds are so extraordinarily low that you would hope that the fda would

move towards approval very quickly. they've been moving -- they've been moving toward approval. the wall street journal editorial page saying they need to move faster. i think they are, i think they're moving resources towards final approval of the vaccine. they have so much information from so many people. i expect that to come soon and hopefully that moves more americans to getting vaccinated. >> still ahead on "morning joe," the eviction moratorium has expired and now the white house is scrambling to find a solution for millions of americans affected by it. plus with midterm elections drawing closer, president biden offers a possible preview of how democrats will take on republicans, especially when it comes to voting rights. and the white house staffer who sparked former president trump's first impeachment is telling his story.

retired lieutenant colonel alexander vindman joins us ahead on "morning joe." we'll be right back. on "morning joe. we'll be right back. (upbeat pop music in background throughout)

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two more washington d.c. police officers who responded to the insurrection at the capitol have died by suicide. since the january 6th attack, four officers who defended the site that day have taken their own lives. washington d.c. police officer gunther hasheda was found at his home, he was an 18 year veteran of the force it was assigned to the response team with the special operations division that

helped protect the capitol that day. we also learned that kyle defraytag died on july 10th. he was just 26 years old and had been with the department since november of 2016. just days after the january 6th attack, two other officers died by suicide. their families said their deaths were the result of the capitol riot. more than 100 officers from d.c. and capitol police were injured defending the capitol that day. >> and you know, willie -- >> what more do you need. >> -- when you look at what these officers have done, what they've been through, the held that they've been through, being beaten up and brutalized by americans, people who claim to love this country, getting beaten and brutalized with an american flag, you looked at the

testimony last week, could see the trauma that was evident in their face from what they went through. and still being mocked and ridiculed by a small percentage of people, but people who, my god, just heartless, claiming that they were actors -- >> i mean. >> -- it's heartbreaking. nobody was acting here. and these suicides, this continues for a force that was deeply traumatized by the events of that day, as anybody would. and i guess, especially now, after these two additional suicides, this is something that i'm sure the capitol police and the d.c. police were already worried about before but we're really going to have to put a focus on the mental health care of those who endured -- >> well, you first have to believe what happened. >> everybody knows what happened

that day. people that are claiming they aren't, have their heads buried in facebook all day or websites from chinese cults, religious cults, or they're just -- again, they're just thinking they're defending donald trump by defending this insurrection and these rioters, these mobsters, these terrorists as the police officers themselves called them, terrorists. but willie, we know what happened, we've seen what happened, we've seen these cops being beaten and brutalized with an american flag. seen their heads crushed. we've seen them lying on the ground begging for their lives, that they have children. and they need our help. they need everybody's help. they need mental health counseling, just like we do for men and women who come back from war zones. >> when these officers signed up to become police officers,

whether capitol police or d.c. metro, i hesitate to think that they could even conceive of something like the pictures we're seeing right now. they knew they were going to have to defend the capitol from a terrorist attack or perhaps a shooter, but something like this, an insurrection, a crowd of american citizens storming through and beating them with american flags and calling them the horrendous names we heard in testimony before congress last week. it's beyond heartbreaking. it's hideous that we're losing officers to suicide because of what they endured on that day. and it's worse that there are many people in positions of great power in this country who continue to perpetuate the lies that drove the people to the capitol and allowed some americans, a large percentage unfortunately, in this country, that allowed people to believe that what happened that day was a regular tourist visit or it was their right to be there.

so those people have chosen the defense of one man, donald trump, over the defense of our democracy and over the defense of police officers who were there that day, a sad state of affairs without question. >> willie, they've sided with american terrorists over police officers. it's that simple. let's bring in right now white house reporter for the associated press, jonathan lemire and columnist and associated editor of "the washington post," and msnbc political analyst eugene robinson. such tragic news, two more police officers taking their own lives. we've been talking for some time about the number of suicides for men and women in uniform that came back from iraq and afghanistan. we're already now -- we've had four officers take their lives from that day. >> yeah, we have. and what a tragedy. these traumatic events leave scars. they leave scars of the kind that can't be seen.

and i just hope that metropolitan police and capitol police and all the responding law enforcement agencies that day really do what is necessary to assess and take care of the mental health of the officers who were brutalized. there's just no other way to say it. who were brutalized and traumatized and shocked and injured. and with lasting scars. it's just a -- it's -- four officers, i mean, that's just a tragic loss. >> jonathan lemire, from your reporting, how widespread is the disinformation on the hill on the republican side, on the house side especially. we've heard mitch mcconnell come out a couple of times even though he killed the 1/6 commission. we've heard him come out, being very clear about the debt of

gratitude that we owe for the capitol cops and the d.c. metro police, but we haven't heard it from many other republicans, have we? first of all, how widespread is this conspiracy theory that it was just another day at the capitol or, you know, ron johnson, of course, tells a different lie every day, whips up another conspiracy theory every day. i'm curious, though, how -- are more republicans coming out, being supportive of these capitol hill cops, these police officers? >> we'll see. this news of these two suicides, truly heartbreaking and tragic, came out late yesterday. we'll see if others in congress react to it. the house is home for recess, the senate still in session. as you said, it was mitch mcconnell and other republican senators who killed the bipartisan january 6 commission. we know it took until "the 11th hour" for congress to put together funding to keep the capitol police going. they were running out of money

and it took an emergency deal to keep them going even after what happened six and a half months ago on that tragic day. the conspiracy theories and those attempts to down play what happened on january 6th, it's more prevalent on the house side than the senate. ron johnson you named him, he's the biggest offender on the house side, that he had been far more afraid had they been black lives matter protesters as opposed to a mob of rioters carrying trump flags and others, certainly ted cruz and others have voiced some support and still voted to not certify joe biden's election, holly, cruz, that day acted in allegiance with those who stormed the capitol but quieter in terms of supporting them since. it's on the house. we've heard from a number of republican congressmen downplaying that day, it was just tourists, it was overblown, these are patriotic americans

using their first amendment right to express themselves. they're saying that out of line with the facts, the tragic facts that we're seeing, as the death toll continues to rise as they grapple with the aftermath of that day for months and years to come. >> look at the trump signs everywhere. donald trump trying to deny that this wasn't his riot, this wasn't his insurrection when, in fact, he was cheering it on from the white house, according to republican senators and, of course, called up kevin mccarthy and kevin mccarthy asked him, begged him to shut it down and he told mccarthy it wasn't his people even while he was cheering them on. mccarthy shouted at him, swore at him, called him a liar, how stupid do you think we are? everybody knows. look at the trump signs. these are all donald trump supporters in there. let's be clear about it, mika. republicans they have a choice to make. it's a simple choice. you can either be on the side of

american terrorists, that's what the cops called them, that were getting brutalized with american flags. you can either be on the side of american terrorists or you can be on the side of law enforcement officers, of police officers. it's that simple. terrorists or cops. pick a side. and if you decide that you do want to support law enforcement officers. if you do want to protect those who have protected you every day inside the united states capitol, if you are a republican, could you please, please offer your support publically for law enforcement officers today in the capitol, d.c. metro force. please let them know how much you appreciate what they do for you every day. and specifically what they did to save your life on january the 6th. because right now, they obviously aren't feeling that. they're hearing a lot of republicans undermine them and attack them and claim that

they're actors. and claim that this was just another day on the hill. and so, when republicans come out and say that, or when carnival barkers come out and say that and you say nothing as a republican members of congress, you're sort of endorsing that. >> yeah. >> all right. >> i'm -- you don't hear me saying silence is violence or whatever that saying was last year. but in this case, they need you, as a republican, to affirm your support for them. these are good people. they risk their lives for you. and they risked their lives for you on january the 6th. just write a quick tweet, thank them publicly, let them know how much they mean to you. it'll mean the world to them and to their families. >> something really wrong with you if you were to laugh at them and invalidate what happened and call them actors. there's something really wrong with you.

coming up, he was a key player in donald trump's first impeachment trial. and now, alexander vindman is out with a new memoir recalling the fateful phone call between trump and the president of ukraine. and the unexpected consequences. he joins us next on "morning joe." the house began its investigation of the january 6th insurrection, although the most interesting exchange took place out of the hearing room as jim jordan struggled to answer a basic question. >> yes or no, did you speak with president trump on january 6th? >> i spoke with the president last week, all the time, on january 6th. i talk with president trump all the time. >> on january 6th, did you speak with him before, during or after the capitol was attacked? >> i spoke with him that day after. i think after. i don't know if i spoke with him in the morning or not. i just don't know.

i'd have to go back and -- i mean, i don't -- i don't know when those conversations happened. but i -- what i know is i spoke with him all the time. >> okay, then. that sounds reasonable. you seem to be employing the nervous energy and deeply suspicious denials reserved for woody allen. why wouldn't i find that reassuring? why wouldn't i find that reassuring only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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plus, no interest until january 2024. ends monday. dad, my sitting here today in the u.s. capitol talking to our elected officials is proof you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the soviet union and come here to the united states of america in search of a better life for our family. do not worry, i'll be fine for telling the truth. >> why do you have confidence you can do that and tell your dad not to worry? >> congressman, this is america.

this is the country i've served and defended, that all of my brothers have served. and here, right matters. >> thank you, sir. >> november 19, 2019. the day most of the country learned the name alexander vindman. the now retired lieutenant-colonel was the one who sounded the alarm about what he heard on then president trump's july 25, 2019 phone call with ukraine president zelensky, which eventually led to president trump's first impeachment trial. and retired u.s. army lieutenant-colonel vindman joins us now, the author of the book "here right matters an american's story". good to have you here. >> thank you. >> i want to talk about the testimony, what you heard on the phone call, but we were just discussing what you said in that testimony, which is your immigrant story that your family came here, i think you were 3 years old, came to brooklyn. in that testimony you touched on something that was so important

which was that you could speak out in this country, something that your father felt you couldn't do because of his own experience in the soviet union. >> i think the immigrant story is so important to so many americans. very few can claim that they're native. that's a common thread that ties us all together. i thought that was critical to address this, especially in a moment that immigrants are being attacked and it affected me deeply because i had some experience with what the other side looked like, where right doesn't matter. in the united states it does. we need to continue to make it matter and i think that's part of the reason i wrote the book. >> pictures of you and your twin brother also wrote the national security council he figures into the story of july 19th, as well. while this is all going on and you're preparing to testify, your father based on his experience in the soviet union tells you straight up, go out and support president trump. how did you take that and what

did you say back to him? >> i respect my dad. he has awesome advice oftentimes but in this case i knew exactly what the right thing to do was. and i knew he was in part channelling his experiences and a deep fear that i would potentially end up, like so many in the soviet union or in other authoritarian regimes end up, which is persecuted, prosecuted and maybe even killed and that's what he was channelling when he provided his advice. >> ironically there was a grain of wisdom to what he was saying because you did leave the united states army based on your decision to testify. let's go back to the call. president trump calls president zelensky, ostensibly to congratulate him on his election. what did you hear specifically on that call that raised the alarms for you? >> going into the calls i was apprehensive. i shouldn't have been. i put together all the talking points, i knew how it should

have gone and almost any other circumstances, except that president because he never followed anything scripted or policy-oriented, almost always self-serving. i knew there was a risk it would go the way we had seen it going with the giuliani narrative creeping in. there was a meeting on july 10th where i expressed my concerns to senior white house officials. i was apprehensive because i thought that, you know, there's a chance that the president was going to go down this line. on the other side there was a professional military officer that refused to believe that the president was going to be complicit in this corrupt enterprise undermining the foundation of our election, which is a free and fair election. that's how i walked into the call. and as soon as the president joined the line, i could tell it was going to go badly. >> president trump called it a perfect phone call. that was the statement, the words you heard that told you, i need to go tell somebody about

this. >> sure. they culminated in the most famous words, i need you to do us a favor. aplay a little bit of drama to it, and a little italian mafia accent it becomes clear. throughout the call you could hear the president building towards something, talking about everything that the united states has done, nobody has done more, ukraine is not appreciative and in response to president zelensky's suggestion that they were going to buy more weapons that they critically needed to defend against more russian aggression, the president fonds i need you to do us a favor. and there was other stuff about crowd strike servers and burisma, and all these things and i knew i had to do something to get us back on track. the president flip flopped on many issues. if things had gone properly he could have been brought back

onto target. >> you walk into your twin brother's office, the immigrant story making it to the white house, he also worked for the national security council and you say this is what i just heard. now you know by having that conversation or entertaining the idea that we're going to push this up the chain of command you're probably stepping into something because of who this president is and who he surrounds himself with. what was that conversation like with your brother? >> the amazing thing about this whole thing is i had the closest ally i could in the white house with me, my identical twin brother. we were womb mates. i speak to him on a regular basis, multiple times a day. so as soon as i walked in there he could sense there was something off. i closed the door, there was a dramatic pause, and i told him eugene if what i tell you becomes public, the president would be impeached.

there was a disconnect that somehow this would become public. it did. >> because he's donald trump and surrounds himself with people like rudy giuliani, you know when you go out that you're going to be smeared, they're going to try to discredit you, strip you of the things -- they obviously denied your promotion to colonel. what was the calculus in your mind of should i do this? should i open up pandora's box? >> there was no hesitation that i needed to report this. it was my duty, i swore an oath on multiple occasions to the constitution. i knew you i would certainly be out of the white house. in the back of my mind, there was a risk to my career, but i was hopeful, i tend to be optimistic. one of the aspects was the military wasn't supportive. your last segment you talked about the suicide of the police

officers. i think having, in some ways, similar experiences, the hardest part might be yes, the attacks on that day, but the subsequent attacks, the demonization, character assassination from folks they protect every day, that's a difficult thing to bear, it's hard to not hold a grudge. i try to not hold hard feelings for an institution i served and loved for decades but it's not easy sometimes. >> how did you process that when the kind of people you served with your entire life, the united states army, people in the military, when you went to them assuming they would take this seriously and push it up through the chain of command themselves, when you met a brick wall and they said we don't want a part of this, we're going to push you away, what did that feel like? >> watching it unfold, it was --

it's hard to describe. there is no outreach. typically in the military you have your senior leadership is always eager to weigh in, correct you if you're doing something wrong, encourage you if you're doing something right. that's the way the system works, that's leadership. but there was nothing. it was dead air. i had one conversation with the chief of staff of the army, he said do the right thing in the right way, i looked at him very puzzled, what is the right way. i knew what the right thing was, what does the right way mean? lieutenant-colonel, challenging the commander in chief, could you give me a little bit more? and nothing. >> what do you say to people who have heard your story, heard your testimony, will read this book and say, these are supporters of donald trump largely, what he said was harmless, it was just donald trump being donald trump. what do you say to that? >> i think we should not be

dismissive. if we want right to matter, we have to make it matter. i think the congress, the senate in particular, senate republicans abrogated their responsibilities under the oath they swore during the trial. there's a direct logic link to the 600,000 dead. if the president was held accountable, removed we would have 600,000 more americans walking the streets today. if they censured him, the president would have been on his heels, we would have been more concerned going into covid. if we want it to matter, we have to make it matter. an individual can make a difference, it's that simple. i'm an example of that, whether that was willingly or not. i think we should keep that in mind and try to make things president. >> jonathan lemire with the associated press is here with a question. john? >> colonel, good morning, thanks for being here. during that time when you were

in the spotlight and the impeachment trial was going on, what was that like for you? were you fearful for your safety? what security measures were you taking? were you receiving threats? is that still happening now? paint a picture what your life is like after this stage, are you still fearful that some supporters of donald trump may make your life difficult or threaten you or your family? >> hi, john. i think i was very, very focused on what i needed to do for testimony. it's, you know what we call a kind of mission oriented, laser focused on the task at hand, which was to come across as professional, impartial and direct with regards to addressing the questions of the congressmen and so forth. i also had some training in my background, time in moscow, under pretty oppressive conditions where you have the security services monitoring your actions, beleaguered.

so that was in the back of my mind but i was focused on the mission. my wife, on the other hand, was extremely concerned. she's as my daughter says, responsible for safety, i'm responsible for fun. and she was very concerned that the letters that were coming to the home, the vitriol on the internet was going to come around in a real way and affect our lives. and at one point we considered moving onto an installation to protect yourselves, we didn't go to that level but it was close. now i'm a little apprehensive speaking out. but like i said, if we want right to matter, we have to make it matter. and i wrote this book in part to address all of those -- all of those wonderful letters of support i received from americans talking about my background, talking about these key elements of my upbringing, military service that allowed me to navigate things, do the right thing, potentially in the right way i'll leave that up to you to

judge, and i thought it was worth expressing these thoughts. >> gene? >> colonel vindman, this is gene robinson. have any of the republicans who defamed you and who treated you so badly, apologized? >> no, definitely not. i don't think it's in their dna at the moment to do that. i had hoped at one point that the republicans who are -- who tout themselves as defenders of the military, of law enforcement would kind of see the merits of what i'm saying, none of that unfolded the way it did. there were a couple republican leaders that did reach out and were supportive, liz cheney reached out and spoke to my wife. mitt romney took a principled stand but those were the exception rather than the rule. >> colonel, let me just ask you

about your father's faith in this country and your faith in this country. obviously you have a lot of reasons, your father has a lot of reasons to still believe in the dream of america. i'm curious where you are right now on that. i remember i had a friend from turkey and during the iraq war, every day he would lecture me about how bad america was, and after about the 40th consecutive lecture, i was like, dude, you can always go back to turkey. yes, we make mistakes. if you think america is such a horrible place, why are you here? and he said something i'll never forget. he said, because america it's like a hollywood movie. you do things bad in many times, but in the end, the good guys always win. and he said, i've seen it since i've been over here. the good guys always win in the

end. and i'm curious if that's where you are now, if you believe that the good guys are winning? if you believe that accountability still counts in this country, if you believe that actually, you know, that here right still matters? >> morning, joe. i think your friend was channelling his churchill, where he said after we try everything else we'll do the right thing. but i do believe in this country. i think having my family's experience, my firsthand experience whether that's in combat zones on the border between north and south korea, in ukraine, russia, i see where challenges really are and the stark contrast that this country poses to some of those -- the hardships that people face in other countries. and this country is unique. it's a wonderful place. at times i can't deny that some of my faith was shaken.

you know, vibrated, shaken is a little too strong. but i always fell back on the fact that this country is constantly moving forward, striving toward that more perfect union. many, many missteps along the way, but we are slowly, slowly progressing. it's hard to see that at this moment where we're so divided and the rhetoric is so acute, but i do have great faith in this country. that's where i'm wearing this flag here. >> mika, this last bit is for you. he's working on his ph.d., and he has got the thesis approved, i believe. >> yep. >> how does it begin? >> it starts with a quote by your father in which he says it cannot be stressed enough that russia without ukraine ceases to become an empire but with ukraine it automatically becomes an empire. that encapsulates the important

of ukraine to national security. and i thank you and your father for offering that wisdom to me. >> i'm honored that you would bring my father's quote into this. i wonder, a little bit similar to joe's question but after all you've been through and where we're going now, are you still hopeful about america as a democracy? >> i am. i've got a wonderful wife, beautiful 10-year-old daughter, super happy. i'm able to really -- especially people don't recognize me straight off, might be harder after these appearances. i can have a conversation with anybody. even if they're -- i consider myself a moderate on the left, on the right. i can have a conversation with anybody and probably come to some common understandings. we all care about core issues. we're still kind of the same people fundamentally, it's the rhetoric that's being driven by politicians, self-serving

politicians that is really interfering with us and driving us apart. so i think that's something that we can overcome. again, i think this is a hopeful story about being able to live with the decisions you make, navigating difficult affairs, and coming through on the other side prepared to rebuild and build back better. >> you've said many times if we want right to matter, we have to make it matter, nothing is inevitable, we have to work at it. thank you for reminding us what right here. the book is "here, right is what matters". thank you for coming today. >> it is shortly after the top of the hour on this tuesday august 3rd, jonathan lemire and eugene robinson is still with us and mike barnicle joins the discussion. 70% of americans have now rolled

up their sleeves for a covid vaccine. but it's not enough. the latest on the deadly mutations fuelling the serge. plus covid breaks through the u.s. senate. lindsey graham is positive for the virus. days after sharing the same space with several of his colleagues. now he's crediting getting vaccinated for not being more sick. joining us now the director of the national institutes of health dr. francis collins. dr. collins thank you very much for being on with us this morning. i'd like to ask you about the unvaccinated population, what the numbers look like to you in terms of the danger that mutations could start being created from the delta variant mutations that are worse than the delta because perhaps they break through more to people who are vaccinated. >> well, there's an immediate concern, even before we think about new mutations.

the current one, the delta variant, is a big threat. to those unvaccinated people. as has now been said, this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated. where we are seeing cases rise now, over 100,000 a day, which we have not seen in many months. but you're right. each one of those new infections is an opportunity for this virus to pick up additional mutations. and while right now the vaccines work really well against delta, make no mistake about that, the vaccines are highly effective, if in the future some additional mutations pile on here, so that the virus is really turning out to be quite different than where we started last year in the wuhan outbreak, then we could face a moment where the vaccines are no longer as effective and that would be a world of hurt. so all the more reason why it is critical now for vaccine levels to go up and i'm glad to see they are, especially in places

hard hit like louisiana which has tripled their vaccination rates but we have a long way to go there and some of the places are only at about 30% coverage. >> could you reinforce to our viewers the impact the delta variant has on the younger population, on babies and children, how dangerous is it for them? >> thank you for raising that. i think there has been this general sense over the last year and a half that young people don't have to worry about this. look at what's happening now. we have many 18 and 20-year-olds in icus on ventilators, even babies in pediatric icus in louisiana. so while the attack rate for younger people is lower, it is not zero. and all the more reason therefore that anybody who has access to the vaccine, which is anybody over 12 ought to be taking advantage of it. and people who have kids at home who can't be vaccinated because they're too young need to be

thinking about how to protecting them with the unpleasantness but necessary step of mask wearing. >> dr. collins, let's talk about people of faith for a moment. you're a man of faith and you've talked about it publicly before. i actually saw franklin graham, a bit surprised by his tweet but he tweeted, encouraging people to go out and get vaccinated. said he was absolutely flummoxed by the fact that so many evangelicals were not getting the vaccine. i'm curious what your thoughts are on what responsibility pastors may have, not only in the white evangelical community but also pastors who may lead churches that are predominantly filled with people of color. those two -- those two areas seem to be, obviously, significant areas of concern for us. what's the message that pastors should deliver members of their flocks about this vaccine?

>> i'm glad you're bringing this up, joe, because i do think they're in a place of incredible importance as people who have respect in the community, trying to do the right things for their flocks not to be quiet about this. i'm glad you mentioned franklin graham that podcast is up there where we had a good conversation about this. his grandfather was a surgeon in china. i'll be on the christian broadcasting network this afternoon talking about the safety and efficacy of the vaccines. but i'm a guy from the government so wouldn't it be better that the guy at the pastor role was able to come forward from the pulpit, i looked at this information, this is a gift from god, you should not think about these as some claimed as the mark of the beast. this is a gift from god, an

answer to prayer. it's an opportunity to love your neighbor by getting the vaccine. those messages are all religiously strong and pastors ought to be comfortable making them even though they're going to get push back from their congregations. >> i'm curious what you think about the future of fda people. what we heard from some people who haven't gotten the vaccine, said this isn't approved by the fda, when it is i'll see if i'll get it. i wonder if that holds out to be true. what's your sense how soon that may happen? >> i spoke with peter marks, the person that oversees this at the fda in the last few days they are flat out pushing this approval process. i don't think there's doubt in anybody's mind that approval will be granted to pfizer, moderna and j&j but they have to do it by a rigorous process. you don't want somebody to come back and say they cut corners

here. you want the approval when it happens to be airtight. i don't know what the timing is, they're not making a commitment about that, i'm hoping it will be in the next few weeks. if you're one of the people listening to this, holding out for that, this is not a good moment to wait with delta going crazy in some parts of the country. and with the almost certainty that these approvals are coming, get off the fence, roll up your sleeve, it's time. >> mike barnicle is here with a question for you, doctor. mike? >> doctor, given everything you know, everything you've seen, what is your feeling about the fact that so many americans have shown a reluctance to be vaccinated and where we're going and where we'll be a year from now with perhaps another variant. what's your feeling about that? >> mike, i never thought we'd be where we are. i'm not a political person. i've served three presidents. i'm a scientist.

i am absolutely overjoyed with the way in which the vaccines were possible to develop in 11 months and be so incredibly safe and effective. but i never expected we would have 90 million people in the united states saying no, i don't want to take this. how did we get there? frankly by a lot of misinformation and disinformation spread in all sorts of places, particularly social media. and the way it's gotten political. somebody watching this from another planet would look at us and go what happened there? how did you get public health and politics so tangled up together? we have to get past that. i'm encouraged to see republican governors coming out saying this isn't political, get vaccinated people. we need much more of that from all quarters. this is not something where your

political party should be so darned important. >> for sure. director of the national institutes of health. dr. francis collins, thank you so much for everything you had to say this morning. we really appreciate it. now to this. the supreme court has rejected a request from a church in maine to keep the state from reimposing covid-related restrictions on services. calvary chapel of bangore asked . though the court has issued nearly a dozen rulings since last fall that block restrictions in favor of religious freedom. justice briar rejected the church's motion without comment. the white house is trying to figure out a way to stop landlords from evicting tenants now that the moratoriums on

evictions have expired. the president has asked the cdc to extend the moratorium, but the cdc director believes she lacks the legal authority to do so after the supreme court ruled congress needs to be the entity to take action. lawmakers, meanwhile, have done little to extend it, despite missouri congresswoman cori bush and other progressives sleeping outside the capitol to raise awareness. the white house is now asking states to hold off on any evictions and instead use the nearly $50 billion approved by congress for rental assistance. >> we have stressed and the president has continued to stress that state and local governments must do more, all of them, to accelerate the funding to these renters and landlords. the president is clear, if some states and localities can get

this out efficiently and effectively, there's no reason every state and locality can't. >> the money is out there for this, it should be used for this. i'm curious your thoughts, congress doesn't want to move on this, the biden white house trying to find a middle ground out there. but there's either an eviction moratorium or there's not an eviction moratorium. i'm curious your thoughts, what should congress do, the president do? we've been through a difficult year, year and a half. we also have people that aren't multi-national corporations, they're families, they're smaller businesses. and we also, as steve ratner tells us all the time we have more job openings in the united states of america today than in the history of this country, so i'm wondering if it's not time

to go ahead and do what congress is and the president is doing and let the moratorium run out. >> well, i think the question is whether you just sort of pull the rug out or you find some sort of glide path for people, for both tenants and landlords after -- you know, to a more gradual or easier way of ending this moratorium. it is true that there are jobs out there that for a lot of people life has not quite -- if not gotten back to normal, at least improved to the point where they can go to work again, they can earn income, they can pay rent. and they should. that's not the case for everybody, though. and there's a lot of uncertainty out there right now. so my question is whether or not

there's some sort of glide path we could do to ease the blow, which will be a blow for some people. i mean, for some people it simply -- some people will be out of their homes. and then, we'll have that problem that we'll have to address. seems like we need to address it before we get to that point. >> jonathan lemire, obviously the white house being pressured by more progressive members of the democratic party to extend the moratorium, they said they didn't have the power to do it, cdc doesn't have the power to do it, congress doesn't want to do it. give us some reporting, what's the latest from the white house on this issue. >> first of all, this could impact up to 2 million people. i was in the briefing room yesterday when they were peppered with questions of where this goes from here. we have a real moment that democrats and white house and the congress, pretty much lock

step on most issues but not this one. they're saying the other side new this was coming and should have acted. basically the white house's stance is the concurrence by supreme court justice kavanaugh suggested there has to be a legislative remedy to this. congress has to do it. congress is saying you should do an executive order to keep it going. the white house stressed yesterday that they are looking at all their options and the officials i talked to said they haven't ruled anything out but they're reluctant to get into a legal battle here because if the supreme court knocks this down, it could knock down other things the cdc is doing as well. we saw the clips outside of congress people sleeping on the steps of the capitol, calling attention to this. this comes at a moment where the white house is nervous about alienating too many people on the left who they need to keep in line for the reconciliation

bill this year. we're seeing unhappiness from congresswoman alexandria ocasio-cortez and others that the bill is not big enough. the white house is forging ahead in the next few days trying to come up with a temporary solution before people start losing their homes. >> still ahead on "morning joe," arizona's 2020 election audit gets mocked by the republican chairman of the maricopa county board of supervisors calling it an adventure in never-never land. plus who exactly is funding the election fraud myth? the new yorker's jane mayer has new reporting on the big money behind the big lie. you're watching "morning joe." we'll be right back. ng joe." we'll be right back. not everybody wants the same thing. that's why i go with liberty mutual — they customize my car insurance

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you know, as democrats we have to show that we understand, number one, we're delivering, number two, and we're keeping our promise. we just have to keep making our case. just as the republican party offers nothing but fears, lies and broken promises. >> president biden last night on a fund-raising call for the democratic national committee. the republican chairman of the maricopa county board of supervisors rejected a new subpoena from arizona state senate republicans yesterday calling their bipartisan ballot review an adventure in never never land. jack sellers that oversees the board, wrote in a scathing letter, quote, it is now august of 2021. the election of november 2020 is

over. if you haven't figured out that the election in maricopa county was free, fair and accurate yet, i'm not sure you ever will. he added. the reason you haven't finished your audit is because you have hired people who have no experience and little understanding of how professional elections are run. the subpoena, issued by the state senate, sought local computer routers and internal logs to bolster a gop commissioned review of the 2020 presidential election results. saying that the items are needed to conclude the controversial audit. sellers concluded in his letter, quote, the board has real work to do and little time to entertain this adventure in never never land. please finish what you were doing and release whatever it is you are going to release. >> willie, this has been a clown show and we knew it was going to be a clown show from the beginning. but to explain to people at home what's going on.

there are republicans all across america, i've got a really good friend, a guy i worked with for a very long time, who were supervisors of elections for their counties. and they -- most of them voted for donald trump, most of them supported donald trump, and most of them are professionals whose job it is to make sure that every vote is counted and every vote is fair, every election is fair. so what it is an insult it is for these republicans, regardless of their political views, to have these half wits coming in who are obviously trying to rig this process that they're going through, to do nothing but second guess the work of fellow republicans who are professionals, whose entire livelihood, and whose re-election depends on getting

fair and free elections done right. and they did again, as krebs and so many other people said they did a hell of a job in 2020, if fairest, safest election held yet. >> a lot of the people who say that, as you say, are republicans who voted for donald trump. go to the state of georgia, the governor there, the secretary of state there where they counted the vote three times said again and again, i supported donald trump, voted for donald trump but joe biden won in the state of georgia. we counted three times. the people in arizona are none of the people you described, a private group called cyber ninjas. who are there frankly tampering with election equipment and they're doing it because republicans in the state of arizona are allowing them to do that. but these states and precincts are going to have to buy new equipment because this private group is taking voting machine and messing with it.

so it can't be used again. let's talk about it with mara ga and jane mayer. jane's new reporting for the new yorker is titled, "the big money behind the big lie". attack is being powered by conservative groups. jane writes, quote, although the arizona audit may appear to be the product of local extremists, it's been fed by sophisticated, well funded national organizations whose board of directors include some of the country's wealthiest and highest profile conservatives. dark money organizations by undisclosed donors have promoted the myth that the elections are ripe with fraud and they have drafted, supported, and in some cases taken credit for state laws that make it harder to vote. jane, it's great to have you

with us. let's dig into this deeper and talk about arizona because we have the statement from the head of board of supervisors there, a republican saying knock it off to these people. who exactly is funding the cyber ninjas and what's their agenda? why do they want to push these people into states and call votes into question? >> the cyber ninjas have a tiny money from the state senate in arizona but the vast proportion of it, something like over $5 million, comes from contributors who are basically national conspiracy theorists, who are aligned with former president trump. so you've got that group. you have patrick burn, the person who started overstock.com is one of the big ones. michael flynn, and sidney powell those people are involved in funding the specific audit. but the audit itself which

people think of as a clown show, as you said, is actually not that funny when you look at it closely. because what it's trying to do is overturn a certified american presidential election. and the forces that are pushing that, and this is what i was looking at, include a number of -- a whole array of very prominent national conservative groups. people that you don't ordinarily think of as involved in sort of flaky conspiracy theories. so you have the heritage foundation in there. you have the american legislative exchange council, backed by big corporations. you have got the bradley foundation of milwaukee, wisconsin, which is one of the biggest conservative foundations, it has $850 million in its treasury to spend on these kinds of adventurous things. and what they are doing is

funding people who are spreading doubt about the security of american elections. why are they doing it? because it works for them. i'm not sure how many of them believe it. but what it's done is, they're exploiting this distrust of american elections in order to push through laws that crackdown on voting rights and keep the people they don't want from the polls, basically. and they're also laying the foundation, many people told me, for potentially a lot of distrust about the 2022 elections and the 2024 elections. so it's a kind of dangerous precedent that's going on there. and as you said, as joe said, the people standing in the way are -- tend to be solid, conservative republicans from maricopa county, who literally witnessed this election. they made sure it was safe and fair. and there's one in my story named bill gates, he's so articulate and someone who's

been fighting authoritarianism and is shocked saying it feels like i'm fighting it at home, in arizona. >> well, that is, jane, when you talk about the heritage foundation, that's what's so bizarre to me. the heritage foundation opposed authoritarianism in the old soviet union, always putting out policy papers about cuba, china and other places that were not champions of western democracy. and they were -- whether people like the ideology or not, i can tell you as a conservative, much of the reagan administration, went to this group for policy. it was policy obsessed when i came into congress after the '94 elections. the heritage foundation, if you needed an issue -- if you needed background on regulations, if you needed a background on taxes, if you needed a

background paper on nato, whatever you needed -- if you wanted to cut money from the pentagon, you could call somebody at heritage and say, where's the waste in the pentagon, where do we find money to balance a budget and they were there. it was an obsession with policy. it's the same thing with a group like club for growth. it used to be obsessed with policy. now they've turned into hacks for conspiracy theorists. talk about what -- this was a surprise to me. tell me about the heritage foundation. how exactly are they involved in this? >> they have a unit that's the election integrity, they call it, unit basically. and they're a handful of lawyers there who are -- hans span is one of the famous ones there. they're busy pushing the idea that there's tons of election fraud, that america is rife with

fraud, basically. if you talk to any nonpartisan expert they'll tell you in most national elections there are a handful of people where their votes are problematic. that's it. in arizona i went back and looked, there may be -- there are four, i think, people being charged in the 2020 election with having, you know, improper votes. four in millions of votes. millions. and it's just not a serious problem in this country. as trump's own election officials said. so the heritage foundation, though, is really the heart of pushing this kind of conspiracy theory thinking. it -- and beyond that, truly, when i was turning over rocks and trying to figure out where is this money coming from that's funding all of this, you get back to this bradley foundation in milwaukee, which is a -- has major league serious people on

its board, robert george, who was a professor at princeton, very well thought of as a conservative theorist, paul clement, who's probably the most prominent litigator in front of the supreme court, these people are on the board along with a number of very rich corporate people. they're funding this activity i think because it's so useful. this lie is very useful for enabling a power grab in state legislatures where they're putting through laws and coordinating with the national groups like heritage to crackdown on voting rights. >> all right. jane mayer, thank you so much for your reporting. so important. we greatly appreciate it. the new reporting is in the issue of "the new yorker". thanks for being with us. so it is interesting what jane was telling us at one point and what we've seen, actually, since

the election that these people that are conducting these audits, whether it's in -- whether they're fighting, pushing back in georgia, michigan with recounts or this audit in arizona, they're fighting republicans who counted the votes and you have somebody as trumpy as kemp and you have the secretary of state there who was all in for trump. i remember the young man up in michigan who did his job, cast that deciding vote. the republican that was the deciding vote in certifying that vote. you look out in arizona, the republicans are going, hey, wait, we did our job, what are you clouds doing? p you see it's actually republicans fighting republicans. >> you know, i think jane's reporting is so important on this, because we really do need more reporting about the money, big money and dark money in many cases, behind these efforts to overturn elections. and frankly any effort in the

united states that is based around this idea, this notion which is false and clearly false, that we have a huge voting fraud problem in this country should be viewed with serious skepticism. it's important to do that reporting because i think it's crucial that the american people of both political parties understand that it's not -- this is not happening in good faith. so it's not as though there were serious concerns and some patriots got together and they wanted to make sure that our elections were fair and safe. that's not what's happening here. there's dark money trying to overturn fair and free american elections. i apologize for the noise i'm here in new york city. but again, that's really important. and, you know, there's a huge right wing media juggernaut pushing this as well and that's also important to understand. >> by the way, let us all just

say we are glad there is noise in new york city. we hope the noise stays in new york city and that we get through this latest variant. mike barnicle, it is something that whether you go to all of these states, you go to arizona, when donald trump is calling people in arizona liars for the vote counts he's actually attacking republicans in maricopa county, he's actually attacking republican governors and secretaries of state in georgia and he's actually attacking people that are certifying the vote in the state of michigan. this is a power grab. this is the state -- you know, first of all, it's a clown show in arizona, but everywhere else it seems you have these republican state legislatures that want to seize control from the local election offices and be able to go in, big foot them, and say, you know what, the count doesn't matter we're going

to do our own count post election. this remains the central challenge of voting rights in this country. obviously the barriers are being put up, barriers you can get around barriers, it's harder, you can get around barriers. but the one thing you can't get around is when the state legislatures say we're going to count the votes because we don't like elections where we lose so we're going to go in and count the votes. that seems to be the greatest challenge to free elections in western democracy in the united states of america over the next few years. >> you know, joe, you used a phrase, i've used a phrase, we've all used the phrase to describe what's going on in arizona a clown show. it is to a certain extent, a clown show. except last night i was reading jane mayer's new yorker piece and it is frightening. i want to read it to you, from

chad campbell, the former minority leader of the arizona house, chad campbell says arizona is in the midst of, quote, a nonviolent overthrow in some ways. it's subtle and not in people's face because it's not happening with weapons, but it's still a complete overthrow of democracy. they're trying to disenfranchise everyone who is not older white guys. and i harken back to what lieutenant colonel vindman said earlier in the show. if we want right to matter, we have to make it matter. and this is not right what's happening in state after state in this country. it's an attempted overthrow of our democracy. and i'm beginning to wonder, joe, and i'm curious what you think, because you've been around nearly as long as i've been around. we have many potential aggressors aiming at our democracy, our way of life, the covid illness. the virus is perhaps the most prominent.

polarization in our politics is another danger. but i'm wondering now if apathy isn't the most prevalent danger that we face, the most formidable foe we face. we're surrounded by the threats and so many seem so apathetic. the vaccine, i don't want to get it. the polarization, they do it all the time. apathy in our country, i've been reading the past month or so a lot about world war ii, various history books, some novels. if we behaved as a nation during world war ii the way we are behaving today as a nation, we would all be speaking german today. we would have folded the tent. we would have given up. we would have shrugged our shoulders and moved on. we are surrounded by visible enemies to the republic. and arizona is just a calling card for what might happen in the future. because it's not just arizona.

you know this, i know this, a lot of people know this. it's georgia, it's michigan, it's pennsylvania, it's state after state where they are altering election laws and posing a threat to the most fundamental right that we have as americans. the right to vote. >> yeah, and you have to look to the source of the disinformation. and in jane's piece she points to the lynn and harry bailey foundation as people funding the big lie. funding a lie to undermine american democracy. undermine western democracy. if someone is a member of the lynn and harry bradley foundation, whoever they are, wherever they work, it sure would be good if they would explain why they are part of a group working to undermine american democracy, working to actually throw out the vote count of republicans in arizona in maricopa county simply because they don't like the

election. that's the lynn and harry bradley foundation. i'm not familiar with them, but obviously big funders of this. but there are, as jane said, a lot of people with good reputations there, they need to explain. do they believe each one of them needs to explain, do they believe that donald trump should be president of the united states? do they believe the election was stolen in maricopa county? do they support the foundation that they associated themselves with for whatever reasons? do they believe this is work that is worthy of being funded? that's part one. part two is, we certainly would have had real challenges in world war ii if facebook had been around in december 1941 moving forward. you know, we all have this glorified view of world war i

that it started on december 7, 1941 and the next thing you know, our troops were climbing up, scaling the cliffs of normandy on june 6, 1944 and rolling into berlin in april of '45. it didn't work that way. 1942 was a terrible year for the united states. both in the pacific and in the atlantic campaigns, european campaigns. and that's when americans needed to be together and supporting each other and being shoulder to shoulder with each other. and that's something that we can't even do in the middle of a pandemic. and we can't do it because so many lies, so much disinformation is being spread by facebook. and yes, we'll say other social media platforms, too. but facebook predominantly has been really the greatest risk right now, i think, to getting

honest facts out there. the free flow of information. right now over half of americans get their news from facebook. the conspiracy theories spread like wildfire there. and that's a real challenge. and, please, somebody please tell me who's been a greater risk and caused a greater threat to america's health since the pandemic began outside of donald trump? if it's not facebook, so many of those lies, so many of those conspiracy theories, throughout covid, throughout the election were spread by facebook. and i just -- i know there's a lot that congress and the biden administration have on their plates right now. but if they don't get to the source of the problem -- >> amen. >> -- if they don't get to the source of the big lie, the spreading of the big lie, how it spreads, like a virus every single day, then nothing else they're doing really matters in

in the end. it's something we're going to have to face as a country. this website that was started so mark zuckerberg could meet women at harvard, now is a great threat to america's health and a great threat to western democracy. it sounds almost melodramatic, doesn't it? i wish it were. i wish i was exaggerating. i wish i was blowing smoke. it's that great of a threat. and congress, republicans and democrats alike, and the president of the united states, need to do something about it. coming up. we'll speak with two members of what politico magazine calls the unusual group trying to turn biden into fdr. the grandsons of former president franklin dell another roosevelt and vice president henry wallace join us next to

explain what the group is up to. we're back in just a moment. in. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ hey google, turn up the heat. ♪ ♪ ♪ i booked our hotel on kayak. it's flexible if we need to cancel. cancel. i haven't left the house in a year. nothing will stop me from vacation. no canceling. flexible cancellation. kayak. search one and done.

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possible batting average. not only for myself but for the team. theodore roosevelt once said to me, if i can be right 75% of the time, i shall come up to the fullest measure of my hopes. >> all right, president franklin delano for the new deal nearly a century after roosevelt redefined the role of government with the transformational new deal, many are drawing comparisons with president biden's expansive agenda. those similarities aren't lost on the descendants of the roosevelt administration, members who now spend much of their time trying to get the president's ear, hoping to shape the country in a similar way to how their ancestors did. joining us now, the grandsons of former president franklin roosevelt and vice president

henry wallace, james roosevelt jr. and scott wallace. also with us, author and presidential historian, michael beschloss. >> thank you all for being with us. i'm such a history nerd, i don't know what to do with myself right now. jim, let's start with you. what do you hope to achieve? >> good morning. it's great to be with you, joe, and it's nice seeing mike barnacle again. what we hope to achieve is to remind the american people and, indeed, everybody in the biden administration of the key holes of the new deal and how they parallel to what needs to be done for the american people today, and that's creating jobs, that's using those jobs to build infrastructure, and that's assuring that people won't starve and will have a roof over their heads, that strengthening social security.

>> scott, let me ask you the same question. obviously you come from a very progressive line of democrats. tell me what your hope is for the biden administration. >> i would say our most fundamental goal is to transform how people think about government. biden has talked about a paradigm change in how government relates to people, and that's exactly the kind of language that fdr used. we want to make sure that government can get back to being a force for good in the lives of ordinary people, and the new deal started out with relief from an enormous economic crisis but quickly transitioned to building jobs. jobs became the key to economic dignity and to recovery of the entire economy. so we want to fight this reagan 40 years of demonization of government and belittling and

starving of revenues that government needs, and get back to government being a force for good in the lives of working people. >> mike barnacle, from '32 to '80, we had a government that was viewed as a friend, as a helper, and it expanded from -- actually, i'm going to take this to michael beschloss, michael, and then, of course, from '80 to 2020 government retracted. it believed it had overstepped in 40 years. we now find ourselves in an interesting position in 2021. you sense there is a change, but it could go either way. right now you do have joe biden, and republicans actually fighting for the future of this country, and we don't know how that's going to turn out. >> no, i think that's exactly

right. mika was talking about that a little bit earlier also. here's a case in 2021 very much like 1933, and that is if franklin roosevelt had failed, if he had not done the things that james roosevelt and who wanted to take it away. people like charles coglin in illinois and huey long in louisiana. fdr said if a demagogue took out antisemitism, there would be more blood running in the streets of new york than there is right now in berlin. he knew what was at stake. joe, it's very similar to the great book you read in the late 1940s. what if harry truman had not been able to save freedom?

what if he had had the political culture of 2021 in the late 1940s and the opposition party refused to cooperate with harry truman in stopping the march of the red army through europe in its effort to dominate the world? that's what was at stake in '47, that's what was at stake in '33, and it's totally at stake now. if joe biden fails, there is a considerable chance that we will lose our democracy. >> mike barnacle, we turn it over to you for a question. >> jim, i'd like to ask you this supposed project of this ideal that you're all striving for to have the reincarnation, the voice of an fdr in the course of the crises that we're all going through today as a nation. arguably there have only been a handful, maybe three or four presidents of the united states since franklin delano roosevelt who actually had a real feel and a genuine knowledge of how ordinary people lived their

lives each and every day. and joe biden certainly espouses all of that. and i think part of him looks at the job as i'm the president of scranton, pennsylvania. i'm going to help the people down at the end of the block or across town because i know how they live. but if you are successful in getting this message out to the country through the president of the united states, what would happen given the way the media is today and the social media is today? could you shatter the explosion of social media in order to get the most important message from the president of the united states out to the country at large? >> well, in the new deal in my grandfather's time, newspapers and radio were the media. joe biden obviously has to deal with very different media. some of it is television but a lot of it is social media. joe biden, we believe, has the

personality and the life experience to embody the same spirit as my grandfather, fdr, and together with joe biden, as my grandfather did with my grandmother, eleanor roosevelt, who really tried to meet the needs of the american people and to speak to the american people about what matters to them. so that when joe biden says, i want to create jobs and leans in and whispers, pay them more, that's the natural reaction of real working americans, and that's what he has the opportunity and the ability to capture. >> all right. "politico" calls them the unusual group trying to turn biden into fdr. the grandson of president franklin roosevelt, james roosevelt jr., and the grandson of vice president henry wallace,

scott wallace. thank you both very much. and michael beschloss, thank you as well. >> it was great having you guys here. thank you very much. we really do appreciate it. and a new study finds that less than 1% of fully vaccinated people have experienced a breakthrough infection. we'll dig into that new data. plus, for months there have been mixed messages about the vaccine for pregnant women. now a surge of pregnant patients with coronavirus is fueling calls for vaccinations. we're back in two minutes. minut.

from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination.

vo: the climate crisis is here. berardelli: these temperatures are almost unbelievable even for a meteorologist. vo: and the solution is here too: clean energy. like wind turbines and solar panels. now, congress has to invest in it and the millions of workers ready to install it across the country. because in america, we don't hide from problems like climate change. we take them on. we innovate. we lead. because if we invest in these workers, and their future at this moment, that's how we build back better. welcome back to "morning joe." it's 8:00 a.m. on the east coast, 5:00 a.m. out west, and we are following several developments surrounding the coronavirus. the biden administration reached its goal of getting 70% of

american adults at least one dose of a covid vaccine. but covid cases across the country are still on the rise, and hospitals in many areas are once again overwhelmed. nbc news correspondent miguel almaguer has more. >> reporter: as the crisis deepens at hospitals and hot spots, the numbers are staggering and sobering, surpassing last summer's average for new cases, our nation has recorded over 1,000 infections in a single day, infecting people week after week. >> we estimate that you could vaccinate five people, nearly twice as many than the original strain. >> reporter: 70% of adults are at least partially vaccinated, but every day more breakthrough

infections are being reported. senator lindsey graham, now in quarantine after getting covid, said without the vaccine it would have been far worse. >> most of these infections are going to be asymptomatic or mild. >> reporter: with daily predictions expected to double by fall, some hospitals are already seeing a surge worse than before. a federal team are arriving in louisiana where beds are in short supply and a new mask mandate indoors is back in place. lines stretching in florida after the state just set its pandemic record for new cases and patients hospitalized. >> they're asking for the vaccine now. they say, just give it to me, we want to get it, which now they have to wait, unfortunately, until they get better and get out of the hospital. >> reporter: hoping to boost inoculations in new jersey, the governor says health care workers like those in nursing

homes must be vaccinated or face weekly testing, new york's governor encouraging businesses to require proof of vaccination from patrons but stopped short of mandating masks indoors. the push to inoculate and to save lives, as hospitals lose more americans every day. >> all right, more now on what's happening in florida. the state has become a new epicenter for the virus, florida. the cdc shows new case numbers there make up a fifth of all new u.s. cases. let's bring in the president and the ceo of jackson health system in miami-dade, carlos magoya, and sir, i'll start by asking how many cases you have in the jackson health care system compared to, say, two weeks ago, and how bad is the situation in florida overall? why is it this bad? >> well, we are -- at jackson we are 230 patients where four

weeks ago we were at 50 patients, so we're almost fivefold the number that we were. the only good news is we're still 45% from the peak of last year. miami-dade county is the most vaccinated county in all of the state of florida, 70% of our state vaccinated. we're still about 450,000 people unvaccinated. if i take those out, really, we're 100% unvaccinated. the difference between this year and last year, quickly, is that last year it was a south florida surge. broward and pompano beach had issues while the rest of the state was not that much. now parts of florida are running 100% of last year. definitely a correlation between

hospitalization and low vaccination rates in the individual counties. >> so if you take out the people, you say, with underlying conditions, the unvaccinated make up 100% of the people that's in your hospital right now. can you help us out, because we've been reading every day headlines. florida makes up 20% of the covid cases in america, around those numbers. that still seems to be the case. do you know why? have you heard any good operating theories on why the situation in florida is so bad right now? >> yes, what i said before, i mean, if you look at places like jacksonville and clay county, they still are 43% and 48% vaccinated. they're suffering tremendously. all the rural counties in the northern part of the state that have less than 50% vaccination, they're having the highest amount of infection rate and

much, much higher than last summer. down in south florida, we're seeing it a little milder, although the numbers are huge for us, they're not as big as they were last summer because we have a much higher vaccination rate. >> so, mr. magoya, there has been talk about whether there should be mask mandates in florida. those discussions are happening across the country. your governor saying he's not going to mandate masks inside of school. what's your view of kids in school? should they have to wear masks this fall? >> we've been at the masking for 18 months, and there are an awful lot of people who are aggressively against masks. yes, masking does help, and it's important to be able to wear a mask whenever possible. but the number one thing we're trying to get through is vaccinations. pretty soon we'll be able to vaccinate kids under 12, and

hopefully we'll vaccinate as many as possible. even though we're at 70%, we need to get the number higher than that to continue to reduce that. we're finding new variants down here that are coming from other parts of the world and the infection rates are very high. the only answer is vaccination. >> all right, president and ceo of jackson health system in miami-dade. carlos magoya, thank you very much for being with us. willie wanted to ask you, also mika, but you and i, willie, will be sending kids back to school pretty soon. i think i'm in maybe a little different position than you, only because jack, as healthy as he is, has upper respiratory issues at times, so mom and dad are going to be telling him wear a mask until a lot of this clears, even though he's vaccinated just because, as we heard from the doctor, people

that are completely healthy who have the vaccine usually don't have any significant symptoms. what are your thoughts about mask mandates and kids getting back in school and whether they should be masked or not? i'm still up in the air, though i've always said, you know, safety first. it seems to make sense, at least in the beginning part of the fall to mask them up if this delta variant and still whipping up around all over the place. >> yeah, and it really depends on your school and what age kids are in there, because as carlos just said, kindergartners from 6th to 12th grade, they're not vaccinated. you've got half of the school they are not vaccinated. for older kids, hopefully they can get back in school without masks. but it really is the story of

the country, where we had this sort of celebration almost in june where we said, okay, i think we've done this. we can get back to school, we can get back to life in the fall. boom, here comes the delta variant, and all of a sudden that changes the dynamics to where a lot of schools are saying, okay, we announced in june or early july that school is back fully normal, no masks, no distancing. we did it, our kids are vaccinated, come on back. now they're pumping the brakes a little bit, i think, and saying, well, this delta variant scares us a little bit. let's have kids wear masks at least in the early stages of the fall. teachers in new york are already pushing back, though, to the vaccine mandate. governor cuomo said teachers should get the vaccine if cases continue to rise. teachers shot back, quote, we have advocated since the beginning of the year that any educator who wants a vaccine

should have easy access to one. we would support local efforts to encourage more vaccinations, such as through programs that require that those who are not vaccinated get tested on a regular basis. but it's critical that districts offer it at no cost. so they're saying, we don't support a vaccine mandate. vaccines, if you want it, testing should be mandatory. that's a position of the union. >> it's a position every bit as ridiculous of a pilot or a flight attendant, i'm not going to take a vaccine, or health care workers. health care workers who take care of senior citizens decide they're not getting the vaccine, that's ridiculous. you're going to have a teacher? the teachers unions have been whining for the past six months, we're not going to go back into class until you give us vaccines, and then they have the chance of getting vaccines and now they're saying, oh, wait,

no, we don't want the vaccines. we don't want the mandates. let's go through a couple. stephanie ruhle wrote, the teachers union fought in-person learning last year because of health risks, and now they don't support the one thing that will definitely minimize health risks. andrew ross sorkin, whose entire mission is to keep kids safe, won't require the vaccine among themselves. this after the union didn't want teachers in the classrooms for nearly a year. let that sink in. i've been saying this over the last month or two, and i said you can see this coming. just like my law professor, professor pearson, said you should be able to see this coming like a freight train out of the mist. it's coming at you. the teachers who complain and use as an excuse -- you can say it now because they've shown their hand -- an excuse we can't go back into class. your kids are going to have to

stay at home and do distance learning. they're going to have to stay home. oh, these parents just want us to be babysitters for their kids. we can't go back into class because of the vaccine. now they're saying, don't make us get vaccines, you can't make us get vaccines. it's ridiculous. and you know what? i'll be really honest. my kids, willie's kids, your kids if they were still in school -- >> they are. >> it will be okay. it will be tough socially, but academically we have the means to take care of our children. in fact, they did it last year with tutoring and extra help on the outside because it's a little harder to learn. but it's truly disadvantaged. it's the kids from truly disadvantaged backgrounds, from working class backgrounds who are the ones who fell furthest behind last year, and they're going to fall further behind this next year, and there are kids that have mental health

challenges that need to be in classrooms and need to socialize. i'm not even talking to the teachers unions right now, i'm talking to the leaders. the people that have been elected to lead, they need to have the mandate. if you're a teacher and you want to teach in front of a class of kids, you need to get vaccinated, and if you don't get vaccinated, you need to leave school. and we'll pick it up right there with our next conversation. new data showing just how effective the vaccine is against breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths due to covid-19. we'll run through the science and the numbers just ahead on "morning joe." joe."

from prom dresses to workouts and new adventures you hope the more you give the less they'll miss. but even if your teen was vaccinated against meningitis in the past they may be missing vaccination for meningitis b. although uncommon, up to 1 in 5 survivors of meningitis will have long term consequences. now as you're thinking about all the vaccines your teen might need

make sure you ask your doctor if your teen is missing meningitis b vaccination.

there's a new report from the kaiser family foundation that shows breakthrough cases, hospitalizations and deaths are extremely rare among those who are fully vaccinated against covid-19. according to this report, those fully vaccinated show an infection rate that is well below 1% in all reporting states. the rates of death among fully vaccinated people were effectively zero. during a white house briefing yesterday, cdc director rochelle walensky looked to drive home that message. >> the delta variant is highly contagious. to put this in perspective, if you get sick with the alpha variant, you could infect about

two other unvaccinated people. if you get sick with the delta variant, we estimate that you could infect about five other unvaccinated people, more than twice as many as the original strain. in all of this, there is still good news. our vaccines are working to prevent severe illness, hospitalizations and death. >> so, joe, that's what we're under lining here is that we hear these screaming headlines of breakthrough cases, and of course there are people who have been vaccinated getting covid-19 again, but as dr. walensky pointed out there and others have made very clear, if you get it and you've been vaccinated, sometimes you're asymptomatic, many times you're asymptomatic, but in almost all cases, you don't get sick enough where you're in the hospital or die. senator lindsey graham announced the other day he did get covid-19 even though he's

vaccinated. his symptoms are mild and he's going to quarantine for ten days. i said he was grateful he had it and he encouraged others to get it. because of that vaccine, although he has covid-19 now, he doesn't actually feel sick and will not be put in the hospital. >> and, willie, as you know, every new york yankee this year has decided they were going to get covid. they've gotten covid, they got through it. i exaggerate slightly. gary kolad has tested positive for covid. we'll be following that this morning. here's what lindsey wrote this morning. it was important for lindsey to write this and we're grateful that he did. i feel like i have a sinus infection and at the present time i have mild symptoms. i will be quarantining for ten days. i'm very glad i was vaccinated, because without vaccination, i'm certain i would not feel as well as i do now. my symptoms would be far worse. again, a very important message. it's also a very important message -- >> for that state.

>> yeah, for that state. it's also a very important message that what you were just talking about a minute ago and what we saw in the package, and that is the odds of getting sick, really sick, after a vaccination are so low. they're extraordinarily low. i think you have more of a chance of dying of a bee sting or a lightning strike, i think i read in the "washington post" than you do of dying after getting a vaccine. and that's important to remember, and it's also important, mika, to remember that how many people have gotten the vaccine? we've hit the 70% threshold that joe biden was looking for. what is that, 175 million, maybe 180 million americans, and we all know, most of us know people or we've heard a story, somebody

who knows somebody who knows somebody who also had a reaction to a vaccine which, again, the more people that take it, the closer we get to 80%, 90%, the more stories we're going to hear. but, again, the odds are so extraordinarily low that you would hope that the fda would move towards approval very quickly. they've been moving toward approval. the "wall street journal" editorial page this morning says they need to move faster. i agree. it does seem like they're focusing their resources more on moving towards full and final approval of the vaccine. they have so much information from so many people, i expect that to come soon. and hopefully that will move even more americans to getting vaccinated. coming up, the ongoing fallout from the january 6 insurrection. we've learned two more officers who responded to the riot have since died by suicide.

those troubling details are next on "morning joe." joe. ♪all by yourself.♪ you look a little lost. i can't find my hotel. oh. oh! ♪♪

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two more washington, d.c. police officers who responded to the insurrection at the capitol

have died by suicide. since the january 6th attack, four officers who defended the site that day have taken their own lives. washington, d.c. police officer gunther hashida was found at his home on thursday. he was an 18-year veteran of the force. officer hashida was assigned to the emergency response team with the special operations division that helped protect the capitol that day. we also learned that officer kyle defreytag, who is also the d.c. metro police force, died on the 10th. he was just 26 years old and had been with the department since november of 2016. just days after the january 6 attack, two other officers died by suicide. their families said their deaths were the result of the capitol riot. more than 100 officers from d.c. and capitol police were injured

defending the capitol that day. >> and, you know, willie, when you look at what these officers have done, what they've been through, the hell that they've been through, being beaten up and brutalized by americans, people who claim to love this country, getting beaten and brutalized with an american flag, you looked at the testimony last week, could see the trauma that was evident in their face from what they went through. and still being mocked and ridiculed by a small percentage of people, but people who, my god, just heartless, claiming that they were actors. it's heartbreaking. nobody was acting here, and these suicides, this continues

for a force that was deeply traumatized by the events of that day, as anybody would. i guess, especially now, after these two additional suicides, this is something that i'm sure the capitol police and the d.c. police were already worried about before, but we're really going to have to put a focus on the mental health care of those who endured -- >> you first have to believe what happened, okay? >> everybody knows what happened that day. people that are claiming they aren't have their heads buried in facebook all day or our websites from chinese cults, religious cults, or they're just, again, they're thinking they're defending donald trump by defending this insurrection and these rioters, these mobsteres, these terrorists as the police officers themselves called them, terrorists. but, willie, we know what

happened, we've seen what happened, we've seen these cops being beaten and brutalized with an american flag, we've seen their heads crushed. we've seen them lying on the ground begging for their lives, that they have children. and they need our help. they need everybody's help. they need mental health counseling just like we do for men and women who come back from war zones. >> yeah, when these officers signed up to become police officers, whether capitol police or d.c. metro, i hesitate to think that they could even conceive of something like the pictures we're seeing right now. they knew they were going to have to defend the capitol perhaps from a terrorist act or some shooter, but something like this, an insurrection, a crowd of american citizens storming through and beating them with american flags and calling them the horrendous names that we heard in testimony before congress last week, it's beyond heartbreaking.

it's hideous that we're losing officers to suicide because of what they endured on that day. it's even worse that there are many people in positions of great power in this country who continue to perpetuate the lies that drove the people to the capitol and allow some americans, a large percentage, unfortunately, according to a lot of polling in this country, to believe that what happened that day was just a regular tourist visit, or it was their right to be there, or that they actually did the right thing. so those people have chosen the defense of one man, donald trump, over the defense of our democracy and over the defense of police officers who were there that day. a sad state of affairs without question. >> and, willie, they've sided with american terrorists over police officers. it's that simple. coming up, we'll turn back to the big headlines on the pandemic and what role the government plays in protecting the people. we're joined by a leading voice on public health when dr.

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about our chances, willie geist, last night at yankee stadium, an unlikely moment, an unlikely player emerged on the field to the chance of mvp. >> oh, no, look at the kitty. it better not be meatball. look at this. so cute. >> we found a way to get mika interested in a yankee game. did you it, joe. well done. >> look at the kitty. >> the yankees were losing 7-1 to the orioles, so this was the most exciting moment for yankee fans and they started chanting "mvp." there you go. escort him right out of there. >> oh. i feel bad for him. he must have been really scared. >> meowch, says the new york

post. >> the cat seemed to have more team speed than most members of the yankees, i would say. but, joe, you were right, doom has arrived. we had 72 hours there where the red sox basically stood pat at the deadline. they didn't get the trade they desperately needed. they then fell into second place, and we see the yankees flexing their payroll muscles again, adding a couple big bats, rizzo and gallo, racked up a couple wins last night soon to surge at the top, as we know and willie has been secretly bragging about for months. >> my prediction, let me say it, willie, again, we may finish a couple games ahead of the orioles. your new york yankees, you made the right calls at the end. you guys are going all the way. i'm predicting a yankees world series. anything less than that would be a heartbreak.

>> this is the worst jedi mind trick ever attempted. it's not going to work. obi wan is very disappointed in you right now. great job by brian cashman and the gang bringing them in, but seven is a big hole to climb out of, especially when gary cole, who is supposed to pitch tonight, just contracted covid. >> let me be very clear, willie. the yankees will win the world series. >> speaking of covid -- >> we combine baseball and wars. no human being could be less concerned right now. baseball and "star wars." >> it was a good effort with the cat. anyhow. we're turning now to the coronavirus and a new alert for unvaccinated pregnant women with experts warning a disturbing amount are ending up

hospitalized due to covid. nbc's kristen dahlgren explains. >> reporter: at hospitals across the country, the delta variant fueling a surge in pregnant patients. >> this is just a game changer for us. >> reporter: texas doctor jessica erica has seen more hospitalized pregnant patients in the past three weeks than the entire pandemic combined, all of them unvaccinated. >> i told my husband, i feel like i'm drowning. i cannot breathe. >> reporter: she was 33 weeks pregnant when she was admitted to the hospital with covid. at one point her heart stopped, she was on a ventilator and sedated. ten days later she woke up to find out they had delivered her daughter seven weeks premature. >> all i could do was cry, saying, i'm putting my baby in harm's way because i was just too hard-headed not to get the vaccine. >> reporter: for months there have been mixed messages about the vaccine for pregnant women. while the cdc said it appeared safe, they stopped short of encouraging it. but in the past week, the

world's largest obstetrician groups began recommending the vaccine for pregnant women. 40% of pregnant women have already gotten the vaccine. studies have been positive. >> we've seen no increased rick of stillbirth, no increased risk of pre-term birth, no growing risk of anything with the baby. >> but they say the delta variant is more concerning. mora is now home with a healthy baby named delaney. >> i would not wish anything i went through on anybody. >> reporter: knowing how close she came to losing everything. >> joining us now, dr. leana wen who had her own experience of having a child during the pandemic which she shared with all of us here on "morning joe." she's the author of the new

book, "lifelines: a doctor's journey in the fight for public health." leana, it's great to see you and have you back on the show. congratulations on the book. i do want to talk to you about pregnant women, but let me read to you from your book, your words. you write this, when i started writing this book, i thought the biggest challenge would be to illustrate the crucial impact of public health on our everyday lives. tragically, covid-19 made that task easier, while also inflicting on this country a public health crisis of unimaginable scale. leana, i just want to ask you, first of all, about the vaccine for pregnant women. where do you stand on this? most of the experts we've had on the show have said pregnant women should get the vaccine. are you in that category? >> absolutely, mika, and it's great to join you this morning. we now have so much evidence

that pregnant women are at increased risk for severe outcomes of covid-19 if they were to contract the disease. we also have the delta variant that is by far the most contagious variant yet, so it's really important for pregnant women to know that they are at high risk from contracting covid and from getting severe outcomes if they were to get it. on the other hand, the vaccine has been given now to tens of thousands, now hundreds of thousands of pregnant women, and we now know that the vaccines are safe and effective in this group. and so we really have seen all the groups of obstetricians, gynecologists, people who specialize in high-risk pregnancies, everyone is saying that the risks of getting covid, we really have to think about in pregnant women as opposed to the benefit, which is extraordinary. >> you brought baby isabella into the world right in the middle of the pandemic and showed a diary to us. if you had been able to get the vaccine pregnant with her, would

you? >> with this amount of information we now have about the safety and effectiveness of the vaccines, absolutely. i think that pregnancy is such a scary time and there is so much unknown about it, and i remember being on your show, and as i wrote in "lifelines" as well, about the journey. i gave birth in april of 2020, and at that time i remember very well -- it was even before masks were commonplace, and there was -- i didn't even know whether my husband would be able to accompany me into the labor and delivery room. there is so much uncertainty around that labor and delivery experience, the postpartum period for women is very isolating. i think it's a scary time for so many pregnant and expecting people. getting that vaccine is an extra layer of protection and an extra layer of peace of mind that i would certainly recommend for my pregnant patients, and if i had the opportunity to get the vaccine then, i absolutely would have.

>> tell us now about the delta variant. we've been hearing about the impact on young people, even children, the delta variant traveling faster and having tougher symptoms. with kids going back to school, how concerned are you about the numbers we're seeing in the south? >> i'm very concerned about the delta variant in general. and i would just say that i think some of the messaging that's been coming in the last week or so has been confusing because it makes it sound like while vaccinated people -- we now know they're able to transmit it to others. but we have to remember that vaccination reduces your chance of getting severe illness from coronavirus by 25 times. it reduces your chance of contracting covid in the first place by eight times. and if you're vaccinated, yes, you should still be careful if you have unvaccinated children. if you're in public places -- i have two little kids who are too young to be vaccinated. as a result, when i'm in public places indoors around a lot of

people, i wear a mask. but when we're looking at the country as a whole, the vast majority of transmission is by unvaccinated individuals. so i do think it's important for schools to still be requiring masks indoors, but at the same time it's really critical for our kids to be back in school. >> they need to be back in school for sure. there are some areas in the south where they don't want to have the mask mandate. is the mask enough to protect children from the delta variant? can parents confidently send their kids back to school if they are wearing the mask? >> well, it's difficult, because a lot of this also depends on what is the level of community transmission in that area and what other layers of protection the school might have as well. for example, if the school also has regular testing, if they've also improved their ventilation and if everyone else is wearing masks, that helps to protect children as well. i do think at the end of the day we as a society have really failed our children. i talk a lot about this in

"lifelines" how at baseline we fail our children because we're not providing programs like universal pre-k and kindergarten programs, and at the end of the day our children are left out. i really hope those governments that have banned schools from implementing mask mandates, they take a hard look at what their priorities are. if they're really pro-children, pro-family, then they need to do their best to protect the health and well-being of our children. >> dr. leana wen. leana, when the pandemic began, i remember you coming on our show very strong out of the box leading voice on public health saying, this is not a snow day, this is a pandemic. and now she has a new book out, "lifelines: a doctor's journey in the fight for public health." dr. leana wen, thank you. it's always good to see you. thanks very much for being on

this morning. and a few other stories making headlines now. secretary of state anthony brinken says there will be, quote, a collective response to iran for its expected attack on an israeli tanker. speaking to reporters yesterday, blinken said the u.s. was confident that iran was to blame for the drone attack that killed two crew members off the gulf of oman last week. they said they would work with allies to respond to the strike on the liberian-flagged tanker which was being managed by an israeli owned company. iran has denied any involvement in the attack. the state department also announced yesterday expanded efforts to aid afghan allies who are at risk of violence from the taliban. thousands more afghans will now have the chance to resettle as refugees inside the united states under a new program. this applies to those who do not qualify for the special

immigrant visa program for those who worked on allied projects or non-governmental organizations. the u.s. has already begun vac -- evacuating allies to virginia. it appears thousands could be taken to the united states as a result, mika. storm -- it has been discovered that black women would need to work to close the pay gap. that discussion next on "morning joe." gap that discussion next on "morning joe. vo: the climate crisis is here. berardelli: these temperatures are almost unbelievable even for a meteorologist. vo: and the solution is here too:

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getting paid fairly. my administration is going to fight for equal pay for it to become a reality for all women. it is about justice, fairness, living up to our values, who we are as a nation. equal pay makes all of us stronger. >> president biden speaking on equal pay day on march 24th. the day represents how far into the year women must work on average to earn what men earned in the previous year, and the disparity is greater for black women. nearly five months later, today is black women's equal pay day, meaning black women will have to work an extra five months to catch up. five months. right now, that's 63 cents for every dollar a white man earns. add care giving to the mix and you will find black mothers make just 52 cents for every dollar a

white father makes. the pandemic only amplified pre-existing inequities. bring in an author f "the memo." what women need to know to secure a seat at the table. and erin haines, focused on women, politics, policy. let's start with you with the numbers. these statistics really are staggering and also demoralizing. what more do you know about inequity between black women and white men or black women and white women in terms of equal pay? >> yeah. i mean, mika, it is as you said, 579 days black women had to work extra to earn what white men earned in 2020 and that's a figure that should be alarming to everybody, and we are covering this. we have a story up that shows one report estimating the executive and management opportunity gap between white

women and white men will close in 2041, predicted gap between women of color and white men may not close until 2124, 103 years from now, by the way. there's opportunity gap between white men and all others. the bottom line is that black women are doing our part. we are hyper educated, qualified, and yet the gap persists. it is time for everybody that's committed to equity to step up to close this gap. but that's not going to happen until the country recognizes black women as equals, worthy of equal treatment in this country. the pay gap is one way to address this. the reality is this is part of a larger conversation, whose values are reflected in this country, how that value is reflected. >> jumping off that last point, minda hearts. how do you begin to solve the problem of how black women are viewed in the workplace which ultimately leads to how they're

paid in the workplace and also, what can black women do to help rectify the problem as well? >> good to see you, mika, erin. a couple of things. we need to focus on what companies and organizations can do to solve this problem. one is normalizing pay transparency. between 2016 and 2018, only 22% of companies reported even having salary audits. we need to normalize transparency. that will help recruit, retain black women of color when we know there is not demonstration of wage theft practices. number two, inclusive hiring practices, restructuring, prioritizing black women at the workplace at every level of the company. that's including having diverse hiring slate, making sure people doing hiring are reflected of those black women so they can see themselves in those roles.

lastly, what black women can do, we can continue to advocate for ourselves. articulate our value, quantify our work. build a culture of allies in the workplace. if you're a manager, this is your opportunity to make sure everyone is invested on your team. >> mika, jumping in on this quickly, you worked with the obama administration, they asked you to work with them on transparency, the very transparency that we are hearing about this morning, how every company should let people know what others are making in similar positions to see through transparency how fair pay is. >> through white house council of women and girls headed by tina chen, valerie jarrett was involved, equal pay was a big deal. salary audits which companies push back on for a number of reasons and inclusive hiring practices. i talk a lot, erin, about

meeting people where they are, instead of getting people to fit in corporate slots that were created years and years ago that nobody really fits into. this is a huge effort. what we're going to do is continue this conversation. go to our website, knowyourvalue.com. you'll hear more from them on this incredibly important issue. thank you both for being on the show this morning. see you over on the website. joe, final thoughts this morning? >> it is an extraordinarily important conversation, i can't wait to see it on the website, to hear the continuation of this conversation because again, transparency is the key to figuring out who is paying what. if somebody is in the work force, getting paid x amount for doing a certain job, everybody should get paid that, regardless of who they are, where they're from, what race they are. willie? >> my final thought goes back to a conversation with colonel

alexander vindman sitting with us a few minutes ago, based on his testimony in november of 2019, he said, quote, if we want right to matter, we have to make it matter. you have to do the work. you can't take anything for granted. >> amen. >> that is correct. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i am stephanie ruhle. it is tuesday, august 3rd. we've got a ton going on this morning, starting with the big milestone in covid vaccinations, amid a scary spike in infections from the delta variant. right now, 42 separate states are seeing new cases jump more than 100% in the last two weeks. in other words, they've doubled. a third of the cases are coming from two places, florida and texas. it seems like all of this is happening super fast, does it feel that way? because it is.