experts say that decision is premature. >> i don't believe that most people should be doing this on their own, it will cause a lot more confusion. we want to actually look at the safety and the efficacy data of third shots before we make guidance about who would benefit from it, and who wouldn't. >> morgan chesky reporting there. more now on schools, thousands are heading back to the classroom this week as the debate over vaccine and mask mandates escalates. let's bring in nbc news correspondent kerry sanders from palm beach county. what are you hearing there? >> well, good morning. there's a real debate in the state right now about whether parents can have the schools mandate actual mask wearing because the governor has made it clear, the school boards, the superintendents, they cannot do that and if they do do that they will potentially lose their salaries and, again, that would

be the superintendents and the school boards. the real constitutional question here is does the governor have the authority to withhold their salaries and essentially tell them what to do, or as the local home rule in the state of florida, 67 counties the governor has been hammering over and over again that if children are going to be masked that decision will only be made by the parents. it will not be made by the government. this is what the governor here, republican ron desantis had to say yet again on this issue. >> it's a parent's decision. if you believe in the masking during the school, you're free to do it. no one is saying you can't do it. but if you're somebody that is concerned about that, that thinks that may not be the right thing for your child, then i think you should have the right to make that ultimate decision. i don't think government should override that. >> i was in naples yesterday. that's collier county. first day of school, the kids are all excited showing up to school and i talked to some parents and some kids about

wearing masks. interestingly, one parent with their children not wearing masks said, we are not wearing masks because we believe our faith will protect us. i spoke to another family. they had their masks on, the kids had their masks on. they were all standing there and i said, you're wearing masks and they said, our faith teaches us that we should wear masks to respect others. so you can clearly see that even along religious lines, people have a different take on whether the government should tell them to wear masks and whether they should wear masks. now, there is a political side to all of this, of course. we decided to take a look at the counties in florida that have decided that they are going to defy the governor and mandate mask wearing. so you can see these urban counties in florida. not all of them are urban, but the counties in florida that have decided, yes, we are going to mandate masks and to defy the government. if we take a look at the most recent presidential election, take a look at this.

those that have decided to defy the governor are also the counties that supported biden. so that's clearly showing and reflects the political nature of all of this, but at the end of the day, for instance, here at washington elementary, the kids will be told to wear masks and some are saying why is the government trying to tell us to do that and others are saying absolutely, the government should tell us to do that and we're seeing a rise in the cases. some report they're seeing more children with covid than at any other time at thisled and the one thing we don't have are the numbers in the state. that is because the florida governor has decided, first of all, covid numbers are going to be released only once a week and

missing from that information is the age of the patients or the age ranges, which of course would be very useful for parents as they get ready to send their kids to school, worried about the spread of the delta variant. >> kerry, joe scarborough here, i'm sure you have also seen and heard from medical providers around where you are right now that a lot of the emergency rooms, a lot of the icu beds, jam-packed and also a lot of pediatric wards also jam-packed as well. talk about just report for us, if you will, the situation and how dire it has been up and down the coast of florida. >> i think the thing that struck me the most was a pediatric doctor in collier county who decided that she would participate in a psa and this was a video put together by the hospital that then the school

board decided to send out. this is collier count my where they do not mandate masks, it's up to the parents and the children to decide what to do. when this doctor was on camera urging people to seriously wear masks, she was crying and had to walk off camera. she could not get through it because of the number of children she sees showing up in the icu. so the emotion from a doctor who, let's face it, the doctors are frontline every day are patients and they do see some of the most horrible, tragic cases of any illness in our country. if they're losing it emotionally, you understand the power that is actually hitting the children with this delta variant and with covid, and the real question is when you go through this for parents is i want my individual choice some say, but if their child winds up in the hospital they may have a very different take on why didn't we just mask everybody

up? >> well, and we hear that of so many people. i have a close friend, i heard it from a couple of days ago who in the icu and feared that death was not far away. one other thing, kerry, i'm curious as you talk to these parents and talk to other school administrators. the thing that i found is that it's not quite as bright of a red/blue line in some cases. in north florida, places where i have seen you and while you're reporting on hurricanes sweeping across the state. i have talked to friends who were trump supporters, who were school administrators, and who a couple nights ago one of my friends cut off a debate and said we're wearing masks, the delta variant is killing people, and it's killing children and there's no debate in this school and if anybody has any problems you tell them to call me.

this is somebody who was a strong supporter of donald trump. i found in this case that, yes, there are those that you can just line it up and if they voted for trump, if they supported trump then they're on one side, biden the other, but i'm seeing some former trump supporters actually look at the science, look at the medicine, and they are actually taking a break. did you find that at all in your reporting? >> i did and i think what what struck me was some were adamant about not wanting their child to be required to wear a mask and then they took them out of school and put them in the private schools and now some of the private schools have mandated they will wear masks. it's a little bit of handling your political philosophy while also concerned about the health

of your child and which one is going to win out here. i think in most cases, the child and the health of your child is going to be the most dominant part of making your decision on whether you want your child masked. the political side of this, and this is one that republican governor ron desantis, this is one of seven states that have said adamantly that decision can be made by the parent. it will not be made by the government. and of course, big part of this, i mean, we really have to consider that should this be a governor's decision, should this be a state decision, or should local governments, the school boards that are elected, the school superintendents that are hired, should they be deciding we just saw yesterday in broward county which is ft. lauderdale and angry parents and broward county said we're going do this

for the children, we're going to mandate mask wearing and there's no do overs when this is all done. if a child gets the delta variant and winds up in the hospital and potentially dies, there's no way to undo a mistake like this. >> and what's so hard to understand, kerry, as you said, we're not talking about rhode island here. we're talking about a massive state, about a thousand miles long, from one end to the other, where there's 67 counties and, really, five different cultures, at least. well, nbc's kerry sanders as always, great talking to you, great reporting. thank you so much for being with us. and willie, i just -- it just makes me scratch my head when i hear reports of parents saying we're going to ignore doctors, we're going to ignore science and jesus is going to take care of our children. so we can act reckless

medically. jesus is going -- do they think that jesus decided to kill over 600,000 people with the covid virus? it's -- i would say it's beyond anything i have seem, except sadly it's consistent with much of what i have seen over the past five years other than now and what mika calls a death cult. we have parents who are willingly sending their kids in to schools, less safe than medicine suggests they could be or that their doctors, their own family doctors, would suggest they could be if they took some simple precautions. >> people are free not to take the vaccine, that's their right but it has implications for other people. we heard kerry talking about some of the school districts defying the governor. yesterday on the show, we spoke with a superintendent of alachua

county public schools, dr. carlee simon, and she is pushing back despite desantis' threat to withhold money from the district. >> any threat to cut the money is a concern, but really when i reflect on the job i need to do, then this is just something that i'm going to have to push forward. i need to provide the secure, safe school environment that's constitutionally mandated to my students and i believe i just need to focus on my job and make sure that i'm providing that opportunity for the students. and i believe i am with the mask mandate. >> in our interview, dr. simon told us about a letter she received from the state commissioner of education, richard corcoran where he pressured her to follow the governor's order and to respond by 5:00 tomorrow evening, and dr. carlee simon is back with us this morning with her response. dr. simon, good morning, great to have you here on. i want to read part of your response what you wrote to the commissioner.

quote, the failure to use all of the mitigation strategies available including masks will inevitably mean that some of our students will have to receive their education outside of the school setting. we share the governor's view that this is not the desired outcome. the death or serious illness of a child as a result of covid-19 exposure is a far more serious injury than any discomfort that may be experienced due to universal masking. we ask that you seriously consider the appropriateness of withholding funds in an amount equal to the superintendent's salary and the combined salaries of the members of the school board. like you, we are obligated to provide a safe and secure public education to all students. universally masking is the most effective strategy we currently have besides vaccination to meet this obligation. so dr. simon, when we talked to you yesterday, you were trying to get ready for the first day of school and check on all your kids and teachers and get another difficult school year under way and then you had to

deal with this. tell us a little bit about what went into the letter and what weighed on you as you wrote it? >> so, you know, we have been examining the letter and then we compared it to how we see it in our situation, especially associated with our data and today or yesterday was the first day and then we got to see the action that we were concerned about occurring. as an example, the largest high school, the entire football team minus students who have been vaccinated will be quarantined. my staff attorney has allowed me to share that she was not feeling well and she actually went home ill and she actually is vaccinated. and so, you know, we have been predicting that this is going to have an enormous impact on how we perform our function as a

school district, and so those are just two examples of how this delta variant is really impacting everything. these are anecdotal, it just started. i did find out that we had a parent who tested positive who dropped off their children to school. so, you know, even the component of parents making the decisions, this is under the assumption that parents are making decisions that are considerate of the public health, and i'm not seeing that across the board. >> so you had a mask mandate, the kids show up at your school district yesterday. how many of them would you say were wearing masks and what did you say to some who weren't? >> so as far as entering into the building, all of them needed to be masked. we're still trying to find out, you know, if we had any concerns that, you know, happened throughout the day because obviously, it's a long day and, you know, things can occur. so we're still looking into that and examining it. we did have parents who came at

the front door who wanted their children to enter and did not want to follow our mandate, and we ended up having 25 submit the medical opt out form. we also had five people who act -- who asked to participate in the scholarship program. we did have a situation where one child was dropped off without a mask and the parent did not answer the phone and that child waited in the clinic and, you know, we are not going to allow a situation where somebody who disagrees with our policies is allowed to do whatever they would please. >> yeah. doctor, let me ask you, how many vaccines do children need to have to start public school in your county? >> off the top of my head, i don't know. if i were to just, you know,

remember as a parent signing my children up for school, i would say there's quite a few of them and then, of course, you have them throughout their childhood. >> right. >> and that is just always a thing. then we also encourage flu shots every single year at our school district and that's -- >> right. >> that's a program with a lot of participation. >> it's interesting, i think like -- i remember five or six, i have four kids and they all got five or six vaccines. it's interesting, you and i are of an age, i'm about 80 years older than you i'm sure where we were also required to get vaccines or else we couldn't go to school. do you find it bizarre that you're having to explain to human beings that have lived over the past 40, 50, 60 years like the purpose of vaccinations, the purpose -- why we vaccinate our children or why

we protect our children, let's say, polio, for instance, my kids got polio shots. you did, your kids did, everybody got polio shots and there's hardly any chance to get polio, but the desire of the government was to eradicate polio from the face of the earth. this is something that we have known for 50, 60 years and yet these people coming to you, they act as if this is the first vaccine ever administered. i'm curious how do you respond to that? how do you react to parents who act so shocked that either their kids if they're of a certain age need a vaccination or need to wear masks to prevent this disease from spreading? >> so i share that same observation in the sense where -- i mean, both my parents

have the scar on their arm where they did -- what was that? smallpox vaccine, i'm not even sure. >> polio, yeah. >> the big, round mark and it's funny and i remember talking to them about it. and it was a mark of pride that they were members of their community, this is what they did to eradicate this disease within the community, and so i remember those types of stories and as a parent of myself i have vaccinated my children because i think there's that collective component as well as protecting your child. right now, i do find it very hard to understand the resistance. i can understand, you know, some people are resistant to change and new and i get that, but i feel strongly that, you know, we only function well in my mind if we're collective and we work together. community matters to me and this

seems to me to be just a foundational act of being a member of a community. there's -- everything is bigger than us and more than us, and i don't understand why we can't find common ground that protecting life is actually something that we all should be doing. >> so dr. simon, as i read through your letter, one part jumped out at me because it was so specific. you said you asked that to the commissioner that you seriously consider the appropriateness of withholding funds in an amount equal to the combined members of the school board. is that what the state is threatening you with if you put in the mask mandate which is what you did officially now. they'll take away your salary? >> that's what they've shared on the news and it's interesting because they don't control how funding is allocated to our employees. like, for example, our organization, our district, we are the ones who distribute paychecks and bonuses and all of those components. so actually saying that they are

not going to pay me or the board members, that's really not quite an accurate statement. they taking that funding out of our general fund, they're removing that allocation from moneys that would come to the distribute in order for us to provide the education to our students. so i guess he can think it's through that way in his mind, but it's actually not that way in the reality of how the moneys come into the district and how they're distributed out. >> so the state might say we might take your money away. are you going to work for free this year? >> i'm going to run this school district and take care of my families and my community and the students and the teachers and my staff members, and if that is what it's going to take, that's what it's going to take. i'm not going to let some

component like this, you know, a material thing stop us from doing the right thing. >> well, it seems obvious to so many people, but it's actually a brave act to protect your children in the state of florida. superintendent of alachua public schools, dr. carlee simon. up that, we'll check in with you this week. president biden meanwhile, spoke yesterday about those banning mask mandates in the school and pointing out the hypocrisy of the stance. >> one of the things that i find a little disingenuous, when i suggest that people in zones where there is a high risk wear the masks like you all are doing, i'm told that government should get out of the way and not do that. they don't have the authority to do that. and i find it interesting that some of the very people who are saying that, who hold government

positions, are people who are threatening that if a schoolteacher asks the student if they have been vaccinated or if a principal says that everyone in my school should wear a mask or the school board votes for it, that governor will nullify that. >> let's bring in nbc news national affairs and from the recount, john heilemann. we have spent the past five, six years underestimating the public's appetite for stupid politician stunts, stupid political stunts. i do wonder though, talking to republicans and trump supporters across my home state of florida that i have grown up in, people that supported donald trump and hearing their response, their sort of defiance against what desantis is doing, i wonder if

desantis is teetering on a bridge -- a political bridge constructed of cheap political stunts and stupid press conferences and it may be one bridge too far for him because even some of my trumpiest friends, some who have gone to the hospital and suffered from covid, but and others who have not, seem to understand the danger of the covid variant and love their children more than they love following political cranks. i just -- i wonder, are we hoping against hope that perhaps this political stunt will backfire and ron desantis will stop mandating from tallahassee what private business owners and local school boards can do and let them do what is best for

they're customers and their children? >> i think we are joe, for sure, hoping against hope, and, you know, the president calling out the hypocrisy of what desantis is doing is spot on in terms -- you know, and you kind of teased it out a little bit there, the extraordinary hypocrisy of conservative and although we know what conservative means is not what it ever meant, but forcing the private businesses and school districts to do what it wants to do to follow the ideological and political leanings rather than following their own calculated best interests which is what conservatives should really want, it's all nuts, right? but i think, you know, the question you're asking about desantis, the analysis we have had of ron desantis for the last, you know, the last year, two years, has been is this guy potentially the kind of smart -- a smarter, more competent and

therefore more dangerous in some ways version of donald trump and that's kind of been his -- he's kind of out to be the trumpiest governor in the country in what is the home -- i'm afraid to say about your ancestral homes, florida, the heart of trump country s that what desantis is? is he kind of more rationale, more competent, not quite so crazy version of donald trump? i think that's what he's trying to do and trying to be and i think the question you're raising is whether is it possible that if you take a little bit -- if you take the trump out, like being the less crazy, more competent version of donald trump makes you not really that trumpy at all and then makes you an ordinary politician again and i think that's what desantis is flirting with. he can be trump and get away with it because there seems to have been over the last four years an unending tolerance of that in the republican party and

where political tricks, irrational anti-science policies, culture wars, all of the stuff that republicans continue to give donald trump a wide berth on that, can desantis get away with that in the face of covid and when he's not actually donald trump? you know, if you're right and we're about to reach that tipping point in florida because of the potency, the threat and damage of covid, we're not going to learn something about the politics of covid. we'll learn something about how transferable donald trump's theatrics are to non-trump politicians and desantis may be about to learn that too. >> it's going to be interesting but on the other side of that, let's see what the attention that desantis has gotten by doing intentionally stupid things, by doing intentionally dangerous things, by doing things that will quote, own the libs. that will get -- own the media,

yeah, you know? everybody that trump supporters hate are criticizing him, and when you have hollywood actors criticizing desantis, when you have stephen king criticizing desantis and people in the media criticizing desantis, i mean, that's a gold mine. of course, he is being rewarded in a sense for doing something that endangers children. and yet, donald trump learned that only made people more loyal to him and i guess the question is, you know, would ron desantis rather be where he is right now or where nikki haley is or where any of the other 30 people who want to replace donald trump is or where donald trump is. i mean, desantis gets a lot more

press now than donald trump. >> yeah. >> so maybe he considers placing children's lives in danger. maybe he considers that a big political win and he doesn't allow local school boards to take measures that would protect children in their own communities. maybe that's a big win for him. >> well, look, it clearly has been so far. obviously, ron desantis would rather be in the position he's in than the position of any other republican politician in the country, except for maybe donald trump himself. he's, you know -- you're right. it's been a gold mine for him in the confines of the republican politics and he's put himself in a position where, you know, if donald trump doesn't run for president in 2024, i don't know anybody who covers national politics who doesn't think that ron desantis is a front-runner if not if the front-runner for the republican nomination. he likes the position and it's

clear that the reason he's pursuing the policies that you're talking about is because he's -- he's been in the positive feedback loop in the hermetically sealed universe of republican trump era politics, but i go back to your first question which is like when does the clock run out on that? like when does the death toll get to be too high? when do the friends you're citing, the trumpian floridian voters who you hear from in florida are getting to the point they're getting fed up with, and they say, enough with the cheap theatrics, we never saw it with donald trump. a lot of the country did for sure and swing voters did, that's why joe biden is president, but are they about to reach that point in florida? how much inconsistency and hypocrisy does ron desantis put

on display and how many conservatives walk away from him before that calculus changes? i don't know if we're there yet, but he's testing the proposition. >> he certainly is. and you wonder if they support yanking away the salary of dr. simon because she wants to protect the children in the school. the senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill and plus a warning about the possible collapse of afghanistan's capital now. the late on the taliban's ongoing takeover. a notable moment last night. cory booker of new jersey is downright giddy in supporting a republican amendment to a bill and then we'll talk about the resignation of new york governor andrew cuomo when "morning joe" comes right back. comes right back

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welcome back to "morning joe." 6:34 in the morning here in new york city and the governor of that state, andrew cuomo, announced he will resign in two weeks following a report alleging sexual harassment and workplace misconduct. kathy park reports for us from albany. >> i think that given us the circumstances, the best way i can help now is if i step aside and let government get back to governing. and therefore, that's what i'll do. >> reporter: three-term andrew cuomo's dramatic fall from grace. the son of mario cuomo, andrew became a national presence during the peak covid outbreak, but he has been embroiled in

scandals over nursing home deaths, the publishing of his book and allegations of sexual harassment. >> in my mind, i have never crossed the line with anyone. but i didn't realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn. >> reporter: cuomo's resignation comes one week after the release of a scathing report from the state's attorney general, alleging the governor sexually harassed 11 women. democratic leaders welcoming the decision to step down. >> i respect the governor's decision. >> reporter: but president biden who had called on cuomo to resign also saying this when asked about cuomo's performance as governor aside from his personal behavior. >> he's done a hell of a job. >> reporter: cuomo's accusers reacted to the news. >> it feels like a weight is off my shoulders and hopefully i can move forward, and be happy again. >> is this resignation enough for you?

>> reporter: it's not. he didn't take responsibility. he didn't really apologize. watching his press conference today and his resignation, he almost still had the attitude as though he is the victim when he is not the victim. he is the victimizer. >> reporter: cuomo said it was to prevent a long and expensive impeachment but that may still go forward and if convicted, cuomo could be barred from ever seeking state office again. >> kathy park reporting from the state capital of albany there. let's bring in tom winter and political strategist with lots of experience in new york politics, susan del percio. tom, let me begin with you and how governor cuomo got to the moment yesterday. there were so many people who said, i covered this guy for a long time, i worked with this guy for a long time, i know this guy, no way he walks away, and then he did. how did we get here? >> physically he got there on

the taxpayer funded helicopter to new york city to conduct a press conference in which the press wasn't invited in. conceivably he could have done that from albany, but one last helicopter ride for the governor to get to the heart of your question, yesterday, i received the information in the morning that he was on that helicopter, he was coming in and there was going to be a 10:30 a.m. announcement. it appeared to me, you know what, maybe things had actually turned, maybe the resignation of his top deputy in his -- you know, kind of his right-hand woman, melissa derosa broke the camel's back and then his personal attorney came out, speaking on the live stream, coming out with the forceful defense and refuting what she had been saying all along and then the thought process is maybe this is the announcement,

i'm staying on and fighting. you have to look at which friends did he have around him and the answer to that was really none at the end. nobody was sticking up for him, nobody was speaking it on his behalf, both in state politics, national politics, nobody was sticking up for him and it was difficult to see, one thing he said in the press conference which is believed to be true, difficult to see how he could move forward with governing and impeachment and with the tremendous cloud over his head and a complete lack of support. >> and the state assembly said if you don't resign, we're going to move forward with impeachment so he was in the corner a bit like that yesterday. he said that the investigation was quote, politically motivated. i think it's important to remind the viewers that he backed an independent investigation, backed by letitia james, a friend and ally of his. >> and that was back in early march, and the two independent

investigators that were hired, one an absolute expert in sexual harassment and sexual harassment cases and the other the former acting united states attorney for the southern district of new york, incredible backgrounds and biographies and they're the exact two independent people you'd like, and then of course the investigation starts to curve in a way that the governor hoped it would not go and then it's all of a sudden a biased investigation. we heard from the personal attorney, hey, they're not giving us the access to the transcripts or the underlying evidence. you either know everything or you don't know what was uncovered so it didn't make a lot of sense and yes, this is completely driven by the governor. the idea by a public report, the idea he wouldn't get the weekly briefings was in the report. >> susan del percio, you have known new york politics and

followed it for a long time and grade the governor's performance yesterday at the press conference. >> f-minus. it was disgraceful. as we heard one of the victims say earlier, he played the victim. he refused to take any responsibility. it shouldn't be surprising that's the way he decided to go out. he wanted to fight. but as tom said, he has no friends. he had no one to back him, to help support these decisions so he was left with virtually no other option. what he did was have his lawyer make a case for the record, that could go uninterrupted and then he came out and did what he had to do. but by no means was this gracious. by no means in new york's best interest, this was solely in andrew cuomo's best interest. >> you know, "the washington post" wrote a piece earlier this week, called the last act in

cuomo's father/son tragedy. it was a pretty extraordinary piece and matt writes this. with new york's governor, the story always comes back to the father and son, the legacy what he can never outrun. the interplay with the late and legendary father mario has always been front and center, inseparable from the drive and the recklessness. it is the defining relationship of his life. they enabled each other, maybe that's the best way to understand it. because andrew was andrew. the political tough guy. even in his teens who would apply -- who would happily wade into the nasty business of new york politics and mario got to go on being mario. the high-minded priest of public morality and because mario mario, a sanctified hero in liberal america, andrew got to go on being andrew, saying that he was doing whatever he

pleased. by now, andrew cuomo must know two things for sure. the first is that his father whose admiration he sought for a lifetime would be bitterly disappointed in him. although perhaps not for the reason you'd think. maybe mario would have been sickened by the allegations, detailed by the state attorney general, of borish groping and innuendo, but what would embarrass him is how he threw away a 50 year legacy by believing he was invincible. he will never outpace his father's shadow now, he won't win the mystical fourth term that barely eluded his dad. he won't finish the third. the media called mario hamlet on the hudson, a moniker he hated until the day he died and this last act it will be andrew who ultimately fills the role better, anguished and haunted, unable to finish what his father

left undone. exit stage left. and john heilemann, i have always been struck by the difference in political personalities, at least, between father and son. i mean, mario cuomo when i interviewed him, when i saw him come speak at the university of alabama, one of the more conservative -- one of the more conservative times in recent american history in 1984, he was always working the crowd. he was always working you. he was always charming you with that sort of brash new york charm. he was always trying to persuade you. he was always trying to win the argument, to explain why his vision for america, a liberal america, an act of government was the best way forward, not only for liberals but for independents and conservatives.

it was actually -- it was a really compelling political personality regardless of where you stood ideologically. his son was just a mack truck. just ran over anybody that got in his way. talk about the contrast between father and son and how andrew's choice of how he was going to behave as a politician left him broken and alone yesterday. >> yeah. i mean, joe, you pointed out -- i mean, just to start, think about the dominance of the two of them. someone yesterday pointed out that except for one election cycle, might have been 1998, every election cycle from 1974 to 2018, one or another of the cuomos, andrew or mario, was on

a ballot in new york state. it's an amazing thing. just the pervasiveness and the dominance of the cuomo, the names in new york politics, and yet as you say, so different. you know, the way you just described mario cuomo is the way i remembered him, but also as a poet. mario cuomo famously said you campaign in poetry, govern in prose and he was an extraordinary orator. he was poetic, he was philosophical, he engaged in the thorny nuanced and kind of the moral philosophy around government, right? no one will remember a speech that andrew cuomo could quote.

not a thing that he particularly cared about. now, on the plus side, you know, people will despite all of this, people will -- some people will look back on that moment in the early part of 2020 when the other side of andrew, you know, giving those daily briefings on covid, trying to present people with the facts, trying to do -- to show the country what a leader would do. now we all know he did not -- he made a lot of mistakes in covid that we didn't know about in the time, but at the moment the contrast was between him and donald trump, talking about the facts, trying to present the grim truth to new york about what was going on with covid, even though it was so grim and so terrifying but saying we have to look at this squarely in the face. unlike what donald trump did. those were the strengths that andrew cuomo had, right? so it's not that -- it's not that mario was so great and that andrew was all terrible. it's just that they're -- they were mirror images of each other in terms of what their strengths

and weaknesses were. both of them deeply flawed but i think no one will say in the end that andrew cuomo's flaws were not much deeper than his father's and have now brought that dynasty, maybe not to an end. we can talk about that later. i think andrew cuomo thinks he's got another run in him down the line but that's another topic. >> susan, part of the reason that many people have said that cuomo couldn't have imagined this outcome is the sense of the entitlement, he's a cuomo, he can run again for a fourth term, and then hubris catching up to him in the end. what do you think of the cuomo name at this point? >> it's complicated. as someone who was there when andrew won re-election in 2014, knowing how important it was for his father to be there, he was very sick at the time, and seeing his reaction when his father died. it's clear that the only reason he probably did resign was

because he knew he could not scar the name with the -- the cuomo name with impeachment and i think that is the only reason he resigned. it was in his nature to do forward and fight this and he wouldn't allow himself to be impeached. >> impeachment remains a possibility, there's the investigation into the nursing home scandal, whether or not his administration fudged the numbers, there's a book deal. there's a lot in the stew here, so what's next for cuomo? >> on top of that you have the criminal investigations and i think those are the most imminent legal threat to the governor, specifically the one being conducted by the albany sheriff's office and they're looking at the groping. we'll see where the investigation goes. all of this is very tricky with respect to applying criminal statute to it, but you've got a

friend of this show, mimi rocah, she is looking into the trooper one allegations. you have the manhattan attorney general's office, cy vance looking at this. and there's more to come from the governor in terms of a legal exposure. you talked about how the lines have been redrawn redrawn with respect to sexual harassment in the workplace. the ongoing culture of sexual harassment in the workplace is unacceptable and has held employees back for far too long. he said that sexual harassment of an employee need not be severe or pervasive. that was october 11th, 2019, as part of the governor's 2019 women's justice agenda. so perhaps when he talks about the lines being redrawn on him, he should look at his own hands and see who's holding the pen. >> that was just less than two years ago. he's on the job about 13 more days. tom winters, susan del percio, good to see you both. overnight the senate passed a $3.5 trillion budget blue

printing. it's a sweeping expansion of the social safety net. the party line vote of 50-49 came just before 4:00 in the morning. earlier in the morning the senate passed the bipartisan infrastructure bill. let's bring in sam stein and white house correspondent for pbs news hour and msnbc contributor, yamiche alcindor. obviously president biden was happy with the bipartisan package that went through. and he got 69 votes, got some republicans to hop on board as well. >> that's right. president biden took multiple victory laps yesterday. you could hear in his voice the joy and really he was pointing out what he sees as really a bill that is going to fundamentally change american life. he said this is a generational investment in infrastructure. he talked about the idea that

this is going to transform american life. he also harkened back to his own legacy and the reason why he won and the reason why he ran in the first place, talking about this idea that he wanted to run on bipartisanship. there were a lot of naysayers who said republicans and democrats couldn't work together. you could hear in his voice that he was really excited about this new infrastructure bill. it's going to the house along with this $3.5 trillion bill that the senate passed at 4:00 a.m. the big question now is can democrats hold it together? can moderates and progressives make sure to be on the same page and can this two-track system that president biden says he's confident will come to his desk, can that actually go through in the weeks and months ahead. >> they will not -- the white house will not get the support from republicans in the house that they got in the senate. there are a number of republican senators who were willing to defy donald trump. i don't think it's going to be that way in the house, so

democrats will have to figure out a way forward on it. speaking on the floor last night of the senate, democratic senator cory booker gave a rousing endorsement of a republican proposal by senator tommy tuberville of alabama. talk about bipartisanville. tuberville's amendment to the democrats' 2022 budget resolution was to cut federal funding to local governments that support defunding law enforcement. we've heard a lot over the last couple of years about how all democrats support defunding the police. that's been really what the republicans have led with in a lot of campaigns and likely what they'll lead with next year. well, here's senator booker's response to that proposal. >> madam president. >> senator from new jersey. >> i am so excited. this is perhaps the highlight of this long and painful and torturous night. this is a gift.

if it wasn't complete abdication of senate procedures and esteem, i would walk over there and hug my colleague from alabama. and i will tell you right now, thank god, because there's some people who have said that they're members of this deliberative body that want to defund the police to my horror. and now this senator has given us the gift that finally once and for all we can put to bed this scurrilous accusation that somebody in this esteemed body would want to defunding the police. let's not all of us, but 100 people sashay down there and vote for this amendment and put to rest the lies that i am sure i will see no political ads attacking anybody here over defund the police. and i would ask unanimous consenting to add something else to this obvious bill. can we add also that every senator here wants to defund the police, believes in god, country, and apple pie. thank you. >> and sashay they did.

the amendment passed 99-0. with every democrat voting in support of the amendment to be against defunding the police. sam stein, that's over, right? that argument? it's not going to be used anymore despite the fact that every democratic leader that's been on this show over the past year has called the defund the police slogan idiotic, starting with jim clyburn and speaker nancy pelosi and every other leader i've had on. the reverend al even outside of politics unanimously has said it's a bad idea and it hurts the truly disadvantaged most of all. so here, though, we have a vote. every democrat is on record being against defunding the police. so the political world has changed, right? >> yes, it's completely nullified. it will never be in a campaign ad again. forget this issue, put it to the

side. actually what does to sashay mean honestly? how does that look? i'm sure what it would resemble if you sashayed down. >> i like it. >> to your point, joe, this is a thorn in the side of democrats because as you know correctly, all the leadership has said they do not support it. in fact president biden when he ran in 2020 ran on a platform of increasing funding for police, not decreasing it or defunding. and they passed legislation, the covid relief bill, for instance, included legislation that was used to bolster police departments. sort of the irony that the white house was pointing out yesterday was ron desantis, who appears to be -- is giving cops a $1,000 bonus across bonus but using funds from the covid relief bill from the bonus so that is federal funding passed by the president, mostly democrats,

that desantis does not support that he's using to funding the police. but no, this is not the nullification of the issue. we will see plenty of it heading into the midterm elections. i'm sure it will be featured prominently in many republican campaign ads and that's because there are a few democrats in the house who support moving police away from a traditional policing role and more towards a less traditional policing role and social services role but that's just a few members and not the party at large. >> jonathan lemire sent in a sentence. the boston red sox sashayed in another tragic loss. yamiche, i'm curious about the bill that all democrats voted. for is that the prelude to the

reconciliation bill? >> that is the prelude to the reconciliation bill and this is the bill that president biden laid out and said this is the human infrastructure bill. that is the bill dealing with climate change, dealing with communities that have been hurt by when highways cut through a lot of african-american and communities of color, it also deals with giving money for children, giving money for health care workers. so in that bill it's really the bill that president biden said is investing money in american life and in ways that we should be looking at infrastructure as a wider idea past just roads and bridges. he says this is a 21st century infrastructure bill. this is the bill that republicans unanimously voted against. it's the bill that republicans say proves that democrats are, quote unquote, as one senator said last night in the middle of the night spending money like sailors. that being said, democrats said this is the priorities of the president and democratic party

and it really is about helping people in the middle of a pandemic, in the middle of an economic crisis try to help their lives out. so i think it's going to be one that the president will want to talk a lot about. it's also going to be one featured in the midterms as republicans have really continued to focus on culture wars and continued to focus on trying to paint democrats as socialists. democrats will say, well, here's what we got done while republicans were painting us as these caricatures. we got you trillions of dollars in money to help people around your communities. >> all right, yamiche alcindor of pbs and politico's long-suffering red sox fan sam stein, by long suffering i mean like a week and a half. thank you both for your reporting, we appreciate it so much. so john heilemann, maybe it was about a month or so ago where everything seemed to be sort of clogged up in the arteries of congress and washington, d.c. i think i commented that joe

biden's april speech suddenly looked like nothing more than words, that things needed to get moving. here we are now it looks like we're going to be moving toward a trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure bill. as joe biden said to barack obama after obamacare, that's a big deal. we haven't had that big of a bipartisan bill -- i can't remember us ever having a trillion dollar bipartisan bill, certainly not in the last decade or so. now we have this $3.5 trillion outline that does look like a precursor to the human infrastructure reconciliation bill that looks like it most likely will pass. even though i have my traditional concerns, too much money, inflationary pressures.

as i said of the trump republicans, not spending like sailors but spending like drunk socialists, that is a lot of money, a lot of programs that conservatives like me might have a concern with. but if you look at what joe biden promised and if you look at the transformational presence that he promised in april, that suddenly is the outlines of that suddenly becoming a bit more clear through sort of the washington fog. >> i believe the phrase you used, joe, was drunk socialist sailors after eating an entire sheet of window pane water acid. >> yes, that is what i said. >> to describe the scale of the spending. with all your familiarity with window painters -- is your brand orange sunshine? i can't remember.

>> i have no idea what you're talking about. let's just stick to inflationary pressures and you talk about acid, but go ahead. >> if it all comes together this fall and they pass both these bills, which it does look like it's going to be both or none. if they pass them both, it will be a gargantuan victory for the president. it will be the most significant progressive liberal domestic agenda passed through the congress since the great society. now, you could look at that a number of different ways politically and a number of different ways substantively but it will be a big f'ing deal for joe biden. i think it is an incredible accomplishment to have gotten through that bipartisan bill through the senate, incredible accomplishment. but it is not even quite halfway home now and the difficulty still remains trying to land the planes in the house simultaneously, which is how it's going to have to happen. the white house has done an

extraordinary job working more in lock-step with the leadership, the democratic leadership in the house and senate than we've seen in a very long time. credit the white house staff, the experience of people like ron klain and steve, they have been able to do what they have done so far. man, you can see the fault lines in the house with a much more different caucus. you have people on the very far left, people close to the center and the moderates. the tensions are there. no one is committed to nothing any of this. it's not going to be a glide path. i'm not saying it's not going to happen. as difficult as it was to get done what they have done so far, the degree of difficulty goes up by an order of magnitude when you get to the house. you've heard people like aoc laying down the law. josh gottheimer had to lay down

the law. i think we'll see three or four more serious like cardiac arrests for the democratic party before we get to either success or failure. this fall is going to be quite something to watch. >> all right, john heilemann, as always, thank you so much. it's great talking to you. even if you speak of things we know little to nothing about. willie, so we've been hearing for some time that this was going to be tough sledding in the house because aoc was going to be along with other people were going to be fighting nancy pelosi. nancy pelosi insisting that the reconciliation bill passes. we see they passed the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill yesterday. and then they followed it up with their $3.5 trillion budget

outline. it certainly seems, willie, like this is coming together. suddenly it's not difficult at all for aoc or any of the progressives to support both of these bills at the same time, pass them on a party-line vote because they get $4.5 trillion of infrastructure spending and a trillion of that is from a bipartisan bill from republicans. so for democrats, this actually, people talked about this being pretty tough sledding, but if they pass that budget resolution, then they pass that infrastructure bill through reconciliation, suddenly you do a party-line vote and they have $4.5 trillion of infrastructure spending, hard and soft. i think most progressives would consider that a huge victory. >> first of all, it's a huge victory for us to have moved on from heilemann's exotic pharmaceutical habits. i think that's important that we put that behind us here on the

show. but you're absolutely right, joe. think about those numbers. when you served in congress if someone was talking about $4.5 trillion of money headed out the door. as you say, joe biden can rightly declare that he did some bipartisan work on the trillion dollar piece of it and spoke to his progressive caucus with the $3.5 trillion, which will include some what they call human infrastructure. so we'll see how that moves through the house. but this morning the white house and the country is dealing with a surge in covid cases in states across the south. in texas, dozens of hospitals now have run out of icu beds. we will talk to the president and ceo of texas medical center in just a moment. but first, infections also on the rise in the state of mississippi. doctors there say they are seeing not just vaccine hesitancy, but vaccine hostility. let's bring in nbc news correspondent ellison barber from ocean springs, mississippi. she's outside the emergency room at singing river ocean springs hospital in a state that is now, as i said, out of icu beds.

ellison, good morning. what does it look like in that hospital behind you? >> reporter: hey, willie, when we got here this morning, there was an ambulance waiting outside in the bay. i went up to speak with them and they said they had been here holding for 30 minutes waiting for a bed to open up so they could admit a patient. they said they took the last only available bed at this hospital yesterday morning. they said that they were putting patients on the walls, leaving them on gurneys going up and down monitoring their heart rate while they waited to get access to a room. we spoke to one doctor here who told us he had a conversation with someone about getting vaccinated and that person told him that they would rather die than get the vaccine. they are taxed here beyond words. they are taxed capacitywise. they're also just taxed emotionally. they're also dealing with not just vaccine hesitancy but as you said vaccine hostility. doctors and nurses who we've spoken to blame the internet and

politics for a lot of that. i talked to one nurse in the icu here who after years of being an icu nurse is moving to a different department. she told me that she could just not take it anymore, that it's become too much for her to bear. she said at this point people aren't doing what they need to do to protect us, so she has to protect herself. for her, that means leaving the icu. she was on one of her last days, one of her final shifts on the covid icu floor. on that floor we also spoke to a respiratory therapist who spends all of her time, all of her shift by the bedside of covid patients. she talked about the look in their eyes when many of them are being intubated and how they will tell her to tell their loved ones to get vaccinated because they wished that they had. i want you to listen to exactly what she told me when we had that discussion. >> just having those patients look at you before they're being intubated and begging you to not

let them die and just the look in their eyes knowing that they could have done something to help prevent them from getting as bad as they have gotten. that just -- it's just heartbreaking. >> reporter: one thing that i kept hearing from the staff at this hospital and the other two hospitals in this system is that they don't think it's silly for people to have questions about the vaccine, but they do think that it is silly and irresponsible for people to trust things that they see on the internet over the physicians who are on the front lines seeing and treating this every single day. >> we've heard from so many doctors who say these patients have trusted us with so much in their lives, other vaccines, delivering their babies, taking care of their families, and now all of a sudden because of what they read on facebook they don't trust us on this. ellison barber in mississippi for us, thanks so much. in texas, dozens of hospitals have run out of icu

beds as covid-19 surges faster there than at any other time during the pandemic. for the first time since early february, the state reported more than 10,000 hospitalizations. yesterday dallas county judge clay jenkins warned hospitals are at 90% capacity and central texas hospitals are down to only two staffed icu beds. >> we now at this moment have two pediatric icu beds. these are not just for covid. car wrecks and anything else. if your child needs icu and a ventilator in a 19-county area, we have two. now is the time that we must all make small sacrifices. masks suck, but it's a small sacrifice to save lives. >> joining us now president and ceo of the texas medical center. the facility is the largest medical center in the world, home to the world's largest

children's hospital and the world's largest cancer hospital and will be hosting 10 million patients. we appreciate you being with us this morning. give us a snapshot if you could of what's happening in your hospitals there in texas. >> well, thank you for having me. the snapshot is a concerning one for all of us. if we look at -- we do have the expansion of being the largest medical city in the world. we've got the ability to expand further that many other regional hospitals. but the numbers are alarming. we've already surpassed the second wave as far as the escalation of new cases. and now we're seeing just the numbers are not changing. we're seeing over 350 patients a day admitted into the hospital. so it's very clear. and not unlike many other places in the country, when there's lower vaccination rates, you're going to see these numbers continue to rise. >> what is the percentage of patients that you're seeing now in your hospitals who are

unvaccinated? >> largely in the high 90 percentile of the patients that we're admitting into the hospital with covid are unvaccinated patients. >> and what is your take on what we're seeing play out from the statehouse in austin with governor abbott saying he cannot support mask mandates in school districts, and school districts coming out and just defying him? in dallas county they're saying, look, we've got to keep our kids safe. there's a spike in cases here. you have to wear a mask if you come into these schools and we'll suffer the consequences. similar scenes playing out in the state of florida. do you think kids in schools ought to be masked. >> i think that what we do at the medical center because we see this data perhaps the largest data set in covid across the country because of so many hospitals, what we look at is the data. you can see a causal relationship in the past when we had mask mandates. two weeks later we would see a

huge dropoff of covid infections. two weeks later from that we'd see a huge drop off in hospitalizations. so masks work. they're a vehicle of public health that we should utilize. and i know it's been politicized, but it's really important we wear seat belts. i remember a day way back when we didn't wear seat belts because for the vast majority you didn't need them until you needed them. any time you can add a safety factor to our children, to our elderly community, to all of us, is a smart thing to do. >> bill, i just want to have you underline this one more time about masks. when i'm talking to friends, talking to family members, talking to people in political conversations, political conversations, can you believe that, when we're talking about a pandemic? they say masks don't matter. masks don't make a difference. you've seen it firsthand. you've seen it in studies,

inside your hospital system, that they do work. can you just again underline for those listening right now. >> sure. that's a great question, joe. the thing that was very clear. we, unlike many other places where they're waiting and have a delay of data, we aggregate the data from all of the hospitals across the texas medical center. we see this every day. we do our own testing and so there's no delay in data. what's very clear, when we were seeing in the earlier phases of this pandemic when we were moving up to peak levels in the second wave of this pandemic, it's very clear as soon as mask mandates came up, you would see a two-week delay and then the numbers just fell off. the infections fell off as well as the number of people in our hospitals. and it was a clear causal relationship. we look at the data very carefully. we don't make assumptions and we certainly don't let politics

enter into our analysis of that data. so it's very clear that masks work. it's very clear from vaccines, and a lot of people have misunderstood, vaccines were never intended to make us never get the virus, they were intended to keep us from getting very sick and dying and it's working extremely well. so masks are absolutely a tool that should be utilized. we try to stay clear from the political side of this. >> we'll leave the politics out of this and just talk purely medically. what would you say to people in the state of texas who say i don't want to get the vaccine, i don't trust the vaccine, i'm never getting the vaccine, or people who say i'm not going to wear a mask because i don't need to wear a mask or it infringes on my freedom. what would be the case you would make to them from a medical point of view. >> from a medical point of view i'd make the following. i'm old enough to remember being in a gymnasium and getting a polio vaccine and that was at a

time when my aunt was infected by polio and paralyzed from it. we gathered together because of the data. we knew that together we could shut down the polio and we did. it's no different here when you're thinking about the vaccinations. the data, look at all of the places in the country that have huge outbreaks. it's low number of vaccinations. they're all the hot spots and they just line up mathematically, you can see it. here the question before us is you have an opportunity with two shots to really almost guarantee yourself that you will never die from this disease and you will never get terribly sick. we're seeing that every day. what's unfortunate now is many of those people that have elected not to get vaccinated, they're filling our emergency rooms, they're filling our icus and they're so much younger. often you'd hear that people thought this was a disease of the elderly. it's not. we are seeing 20 -- on average,

20 years younger of the people that we're admitting very sick in their 30s, 40s, that thought they were invulnerable and are very sick and we're losing some of those people sadly. so in a time where you have an opportunity to rid this from our economy, there's no faster way to get an economy back than to wipe out this virus. and i just hope that we could all really move past the political side of this, listen to physicians, do the right thing, get a vaccine, wear a mask when you're in public settings and we'll move this virus out of our communities. but until we are willing to do that collectively as a population, we're going to be with this virus for many, many more months to come. >> president and ceo of the texas medical center, bill mckeon, thank you so much for being with us. we really do appreciate it. appreciate you taking time out

during this very, very busy time for you. hope you'll come back. so, willie, so much to go over there. we hear from time to time and we see on twitter some people saying, me not getting a vaccine, it's nothing to you, it's my business an nobody else's business. just not the case. it is everybody else's business. you hear from one hospital administrator like bill after another after another that the emergency rooms and the icu beds are jammed with covid patients. i've got a friend who got a desperate call last week about not being able to get into a hospital in florida because this person was having what they thought to be a heart attack. that's usually the fast track into any emergency room. but they didn't let him in in a timely manner because they had a long line. they had security guards waiting at the door.

they didn't want people that were panicking thinking they had covid to go in and get inside of there. and we've heard throughout this morning, i've heard throughout the state of florida, i've heard across the country, i'm sure you have too, that because of the unvaccinated, icu beds are jammed. because of the unvaccinated, emergency rooms are jammed. people who are having heart attacks, people in car accidents, people who need care aren't getting that care as quickly or may not even get an icu bed as we heard from a press conference out of dallas about 20 minutes ago. they're down to two icu beds in their entire system. in north florida, i talked to somebody on a hospital board that said they are just completely jam packed. he went through the records. 100% of the covid patients in there that were filling the emergency rooms an filling up

their icu beds, 100% were unvaccinated. so there is a very real cost not just to the frontline workers and not just to the families who are suffering as they watch loved ones get sick and possibly die, but also to the rest of their neighborhood, the rest of their communities for people who may get sick with something else and need to get to the hospital. they're not able to do that if the beds are all filled with people who refuse to take a vaccination. so they don't want to take a vaccination, we're in america, as i said. everybody has a right to be dumb. but you don't have a right to be dumb and say this is my choice and it's not affecting anybody else. the hyperindividualism is sort of -- that logic sort of short circuits somewhere between the i

can do what i want and it doesn't affect other people because it most definitely does. >> there's no question it's affecting icus and emergency rooms. a lot of hospitals are cancelling elective surgeries, they have already taken that step. the frustration is the miracle vaccine arrived a year ago as we talked about this in new york and all these other hot spots. the difficult truth was we weren't really going to be able to get through this until there was a vaccine. well, the government and pharmaceutical companies and brilliant doctors and scientists got together and made vaccines. we have it, it's here. it's the way out. you just heard from the state of texas that it's in the high 90s in terms of a percentage of patients who are in those hospitals who were unvaccinated. there's no mystery. if you get vaccinated, you're protected from covid-19. but there are many people in this country who still refuse to get it. we're going to continue to cover that. we want to move to the state of new york where governor andrew cuomo announced yesterday he is stepping down. the three-term governor announced his resignation yesterday saying he no longer could effectively lead the state

and will end his time in office in two weeks. the decision comes as the new york state assembly prepares to ending its months-long impeachment probe and the governor faces potential civil and criminal penalties from several sexual harassment allegations. >> now, you know me. i'm a new yorker born and bred. i am a fighter. and my instinct is to fight through this controversy, because i truly believe it is politically motivated. i believe it is unfair and it is untruthful. this situation by its current trajectory will generate months of political and legal controversy. that is what is going to happen. i think that given the circumstances, the best way i can help now is if i step aside

and let government get back to governing. and, therefore, that's what i'll do and my resignation will be effective in 14 days. >> in less than two weeks now lieutenant governor kathy hochul will take over and become the first woman to lead new york state as the acting governor. she responded to governor cuomo's resignation in a statement that reads i agree with governor cuomo's decision to step down. it is the right thing to do and in the best interest of new yorkers. as someone who has served at all levels of government and is next in the line of succession, i am prepared to lead as new york state's 57th governor. joining us now, former u.s. senator and now an nbc news and msnbc political analyst, claire mccaskill and host of msnbc's "politics nation" and president of the national action network, reverend al sharpton. rev, you've known this man for a very long time. are you surprised that he stepped down yesterday? >> i was surprised he did yesterday. he called me the day of or the

day after the report had dropped and he was clearly still getting ready to fight. he was in a very fighting mood. i've known him 35 years, worked together on several things, including the eric garner chokehold law and $15 minimum wage. he did a lot of good things. but these are serious charges. and i told him, i said, let me tell you something, governor. i've talked to the chapter leaders around the state of the national action network, upstays, buffalo, syracuse, long island, and most of the leaders think you should resign. al, hold on, more will come out and he was saying it was political, that the prosecutor, i believe his name was kim, had been after him when he was in the southern district. and i was telling him where the mood was even among people that were allied with him. so i was surprised. he had already kept his defense.

yesterday when the announcement came, i was surprised he did it. but i felt as he finally said it had got to where he could not govern. there was nowhere that he could continue to govern. whether he believed or not that what he did was what they said, he couldn't govern. these were very, very serious charges that should not be taken lightly by the state assembly or the state senate. >> i'm curious as we look back on andrew cuomo's reign in albany, obviously he's going to be remembered like nixon is going to be remembered for watergate. he's going to be remembered for this attorney general's report and sexual harassment charges against him and also of course the nursing home scandal, which i suspect is not over yet. i am curious, though, rev, the state of new york as far as a governor goes, talk about his policies. you talked about a $15 minimum

wage. how was he as a governor over his almost three terms? >> i think overall he was good. there may have been some things we disagreed, but he moved forward on things like police reform, like lgbtq rights. he was very, very close with labor on a lot of those issues. i think he was good. he was as a person abrasive, had sharp elbows, and a lot of the elected officials and also state leaders found him as not the kind of person that you'd find as a guy that you'd go get a beer with him, as they would say in the terms of being friendly. but he was effective, which is also why it's sad to see what happened. but even in that sense of being a comrade on political terms, you still have to respect the

fact that women have to be regarded and respected and that you can't take these things lightly, even with those that you may be allied with. you cannot have this kind of behavior tolerated. >> yeah, it is, claire mccaskill, obviously there was no moving forward with him and i would say not just because of the attorney general's report but also ultimately because of the lies that were told about the nursing home scandal. the one thing, though, i've never gotten as we look back on andrew cuomo, and feel free to talk about anything you feel to talk about that's happened over the past 24 hours or 48 hours, but one thing we haven't talked about yet is the rev brought up his abrasive personality. i've said from the beginning, i didn't get it. i didn't get a politician running who was that abrasive with the media, who was that abrasive with people that he worked in day in and day out. but it never seemed to catch up to him until the last few months

where he found himself alone on a political island without a single friend defending him. >> you know, joe, i think i can speak for a lot of women that morning that when cuomo made his statement yesterday, there was raw, burning anger by a lot of women when he said he didn't believe he'd ever crossed the line, he just didn't realize the line had been moved. now let's put in context that statement. in this report that i read with the eye of a prosecutor, there is a young state trooper that cuomo pulled into his detail, a mere handful of years ago. she wasn't qualified to be in his detail based on her years of experience. he wiped that rule out in pull her in and then he did a series of things with her, just a few years ago. can you imagine thinking that the line doesn't prevent you from in an elevator running your finger down the spine of a state

trooper in your detail and saying, hey. can you imagine thinking the line has not moved enough that when you brush over the state trooper who's supposed to be guarding you's stomach into her hip that you think that somehow is a line that has moved? and what's really startling about this is not only his trying to justify in his power-addled brain that what he had done was somehow appropriate was that he asked for this investigation, which means his power had corrupted him so much, maybe because of his abrasive personality and he wanted to chalk it up to people don't like me because i'm tough. but he asked for this investigation, knowing that he had run his finger down the spine of a very young woman state trooper on an elevator. he knew that and that was just a couple of years ago, joe. so he actually sat there and acted like he had done nothing

wrong. >> and that's what's so -- by the way, the conversation -- what you just said is pretty remarkable. that's the conversation that mika and i privately had last night. we were talking about this and we were going through -- of course we both thought he should have resigned for a thousand reasons, but we were going through our due process arguments. we are going through the attorney and just talking between us, not preparing for the show but talking over dinner about this and we both went in on that state trooper because there were some parts of the report that were he said/she said and the attorney general assumed the woman was telling the truth. but mika and i both got to that trooper, who was not qualified to be there. everybody knew she wasn't qualified to be there. and most importantly, there were witnesses. it didn't mean that what she

said was any more true or false than what anybody else said, it's just, again, as you're looking to charge somebody with a crime, you need witnesses. and the evidence in that case was so remarkable. what i said to mika was, it's so funny you said this was just a couple of years ago. i said, mika, it's 2021. it's not like this is 1991 or 1971. it would have been wrong in all of those years. but this guy had such advance notice that the rules had radically changed post me too. how could he or anybody have done this and then got in front of microphones and said, well, i guess the rules changed on me. he couldn't say that in good faith, claire. >> let's make sure we're clear about one thing and i'm going to gently push you here like i think mika might if she were on set with you. i don't think the rules changed.

i think women began to evaluate the risks of coming forward versus the incredible desire to change the workplace. >> hold on a second, claire. let me be very clear here. let me be very clear. i didn't say the rules had changed. i believe i said he was precluded at his press conference from saying the rules had changed. >> correct. >> i said what he did with the trooper was just as wrong in 1991 as it was in 1971. >> exactly. >> was it would have been in 1951, just as disgusting on a human level. i'm sorry, go ahead. >> absolutely. you and i both totally agree on that. but what has changed is the courage of women to come forward. i think back to some of the things that happened to me in the early '80s in the missouri state legislature when i was about the age of that state trooper and i was single. i kept my mouth shut because i was so afraid of the impact it

would have on my ability to do my work for the people who had elected me. and my career. i mean let's be candid and honest about that. women are now being braver about coming forward, and that state trooper -- there were witnesses. i mean there were things he said to her within the confines of the truck, which is what they call the package that the governor travels in with security, where her supervisor said to her make sure what he said in the truck stays in the truck. read page 33 of this report which is the details about this state trooper. we're talking about 2018 and 2019. we're talking about just a little while ago. this guy who tries to stand in front of a camera and use his god-given ability to communicate to try to say this was politically motivated, he asked for the investigation. he knew he was guilty. he had to go because his power had completely corrupted his character. >> he said it was biased and

politically motivated, downright trumpian and still holding on to the argument that it's generational and cultural the way he acts around women. rev, let me ask you this since you do know governor cuomo well. how is he looking at his future now? there are investigations of course into the nursing home scandal. there's criminal investigations in new york. they're looking at whether or not his staff worked on his $5 million book in the middle of the covid crisis. where does he go from here? >> i clearly feel he will be very much trying to fight with all he has all of the investigations. he's not one that will go off quietly into the sunset. andrew cuomo will be around in some form or fashion if he can arrange that from now on. he's not going to just disappear. now, how viable that will be we'll see. and i think that we've got to see where the state goes.

the lieutenant governor who will be governor, hochul, she faces challenges. i told him the black community, she voted against the first black attorney general, eric holder. things like that she's going to have to deal with as she tries to govern. so the concerns about where the state goes and the nation is a lot more concerning than where andrew goes. but andrew is not going to be one that last time we saw him he was waving good-bye. that's not andrew cuomo. >> for now he's got 13 days left in the governor's mansion. after that, who knows what. rev, great to see you. claire, great to see you as well. ahead, as the taliban continues its advance in afghanistan, a u.s. envoy delivers a blunt message to those milmilitants. plus the latest move in a legal battle over the 2020 election. dominion voting systems has filed new lawsuits against conservative television networks over their false claims about

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so i called the barnes firm. i'm rich barnes. youour cidedentase e woh than insurance offered? call the barnes firm now to find out. yoyou ght t beurprpris i want to thank a group of senators, democrats and republicans, for doing what they told me they would do. after years and years of infrastructure week, we're on the cusp of an infrastructure decade that i truly believe will transform america. this bill shows that we can work together. i know a lot of people, some sitting in the audience here, didn't think this could happen. this bill was declared dead more often than -- anyway. that bipartisanship was a thing of the past. it was a relic of an earlier

age. as you may well remember, i never believed that and i still don't. so i want to thank those senators who worked so hard to bring this agreement together. i know it wasn't easy. for the republicans who supported this bill, you showed a lot of courage. >> president biden at the white house yesterday celebrating the senate's passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. the final vote was 69-30 with 19 republicans joining all democrats to approve the bill. and overnight the senate also passed a $3.5 trillion budget blueprint. this one was 50-49 in the vote along party lines. it's the first step for democrats to push through their sweeping expansion of the country's social safety net without any republican support yesterday, joe. >> let's bring author of the best-selling book "evil geniuses," kurt andersen. kurt, i love your book so much for so many reasons.

even though i'm a conservative, it explained a lot to me, the political world that we live in and actually the political world that i sort of inherited when i ran in 1994. i wasn't exactly sure where everything came from. you explained a lot of that very well. we've had a ton of books that explained what happened from '32 to '80, the fdr era. not a lot of books that really go in and try to figure out what happened and why it happened during the reagan era from let's just say '81 to 2016. your book did that. i want to get to a lot of other things. but first explain that and explain how the biden administration especially with what's happened over the last 24 hours and their appointments on antitrust, how it looks like we just well may be entering yet another era. >> well, my fingers are crossed that we are. what happened in the '70s and then spectacularly in the 1980s

was a declaration that the new deal and all that came out of it was obsolete. we didn't need that anymore, that we were beyond that. it began to be rolled back, along with tax cuts and everything else. and that paradigm shift, which was very carefully maneuvered and navigated and imposed by the economic right really worked. and democrats ceased being an alternative economically, presenting an alternative to the republicans. now, 40 years later, it seems like the paradigm is shifting. the pendulum is swinging. yes, with -- i frankly am amazed and heartened by what has happened thanks to the biden administration. as you say, this -- and as you've been saying all show and all week, this infrastructure bill is extraordinary. and, you know, it's not passed yet but it's certainly winding

its way there more efficiently and efficaciously than we ever imagined. and it's not just a social safety net. one of the other things that had been torn asunder and emass lated is antitrust. we stopped staying that companies could be too big and too powerful economically and politically. we stopped really having effective antitrust enforcement in this country. the biden administration has put in place this troica antitrust superstars in the department of justice and so maybe the corner has turned, we'll see. obviously the war is not over but we're getting there. and just last week this piece of economic news that got kind of eclipsed by the new news about the coup plotting and the we feel in the justice department who helped donald trump, amazing

job statistics came out last friday. almost a million jobs created. unemployment dramatically down, wages way up. so maybe we're turning the corner. >> you know, kurt, let me just -- we had you on for a week obviously i loved this book a lot. and i just want to explain to conservatives, somebody like me, when i ran i ran as a conservative/libertarian/ populist. there's something in your book for everybody. for instance, if you want to understand why facebook is facebook and why amazon is amazon and why these monopolies are monopolies, you go in and you explain how the bork standard changed -- completely changed the focus of antitrust legislation and allowed big corporations to get bigger. and in my opinion, and i would guess the opinion of a lot of republicans, some of whom are sitting in the senate right now who are considered fairly conservative, actually changed the laws in a way that would

crush entrepreneurs and effectively stop the entrance into the marketplace of, let's say, microsoft in the 1970s where a bunch of hippies from berkeley could start microsoft in their father's garage with a $5,000 loan. that can't happen now because of the changes that have happened in antitrust law. >> well, absolutely right. and the last big federal antitrust case against microsoft in 1998-1999, its settlement allowed the google and facebooks to arise in the early 2000s. had we not -- so that is exactly the way in which effective, good antitrust can be like a good forest or a good gardener letting more plants rise, letting competition thrive. you know, it's interesting about antitrust. the last two years we've seen in various ways a real bipartisan embrace of antitrust, certainly in the case of the big tech companies as you say.

so i don't -- that may be the next big antitrust -- or bipartisan success in washington. the new laws that are necessary to effectively regulate big tech. >> kurt, i'm curious for your take on what we're seeing right now. i guess in the age of trump it started but we're seeing it in the state of florida now. you write about this 40-year era of small government. but the argument that twists actual conservatives like joe's brain in knots from governor desantis is i don't want the federal government telling us what to do. yet i'm going to tell private cruise ship companies what they can do and i'm going to tell school boards, school districts who want to put masks on kids that they can't do it. that's not conservatism, it's something else. what is it? >> it's power. he wants to be the -- desantis wants to be the autocrat of the state of florida. all of this conservative talk of localizing authority, localizing power as the superintendent that you had on this morning said, the florida superintendent, this is the most local authority

thing we have in america, for better or worse, but it's real. but no, desantis, no, i'm going to tell you what to do. i'm going to tell you, mayor or superintendent, what you can and can't do, how you can and can't operate your schools. it's ridiculous. along with so much of the rest of policy or nonpolicy that, quote unquote, conservatives are pushing these days is not the conservatism of, you know, congressman joe scarborough in the 1990s or my republican family in nebraska. it's just -- i try not to use the word "conservative" because it isn't. >> small government keeps government out of your life except in the state of florida where they want to dabble in every school board meeting, it appears. >> yeah. kurt, great work in this area of antitrust. i wanted to bring up we all talk about big tech and we talk about and i've seen firsthand the power big pharma has had on capitol hill, the painful reality that people of both parties were folding under their

pressure from big pharma. let's talk a little bit about big ag. i noticed yesterday that grassley, a big ag senator from a state that is totally ag dependent, iowa, he asked the department of justice to go after the acquisition of sanderson farms, the third largest poultry producer in the country, by two of the big ag corporate giants. do you think this is the moment where they could take that case, biden's doj, and actually grab a scalp in stopping this consolidation that really hurts the american farmer and the american consumer? >> i do. i really do think there is a growing and to some degree bipartisan reembrace, revival of antitrust sentiment. we lost it for 40 years. but now we have the various undeniable expressions of the problem of concentration, of big

corporate concentration in agriculture as in tech. of course there are fewer americans directly affected by big ag than in the case of big tech. but absolutely. i think big tech is, again, everybody uses google. everybody has facebook. so it is familiar to citizens. but, familiar to citizens. but, no, i think it can extend to things, to the monsantos and tyson meats of the world as well. >> you wrote a piece. i've been talking for a while on this show now about this hyperindividualism. of course we always -- i say we, those of us on the right for some time have always talked about individual rights over state rights at least in our minds. at least we believe it this time. there were some balancing act that you didn't want the state

coming in and taking your rights, but you still had responsibility to love your neighbor as yourself. you had a responsibility to worry about your neighbor. you had a responsibility to worry about those around you. we saw the rise of mothers against drunk driving, bringing down fatalities from recklessness and drinking and driving. you talk about the seat belt laws, all these other laws where there was some push backs by extremes but nothing like this. so there's a hyperindividualism. basically it's devolved into brattish 5-year-old behavior. i can do what i want, when i want, however i want and you have no right to tell me anything. i'm not talking about a global vaccine mandate or a global u.n. tax. i'm just talking about how conservatives used to be conservatives with a small "c," at least the ones i hung out

with and understood they were going to fight for individual rights but they still had a responsibility to their neighbor, to their community, to their country. i think that's lost for so many people that followed -- blindly followed donald trump. >> well, imagine if back in the day the republicans of the nixon era, the reagan era, the ford era had made seat belts the hill they were going to die on. we're against installing seat belts because big government shouldn't do that, and we're against requiring as state law quickly did passengers and drivers to wear seat belts. it's unimaginable, but here we are. you're exactly right. one of the bad things that came out of the 1960s is this extreme hyperindividualism, that it's whatever i want in this childish fashion i want to get and you can't take it away from me. and now it's the right that has made it central to their politics.

>> and as williamson said in his piece and we talked about with you a week or two ago, it seems that the right is having their hippy moment. kurt anderson, thank you so much. i appreciate it. it's so funny. the book is "evil geniuses," by the way, the unmaking of america. it's now out in paper back. it's one of our favorite books we've talked about a lot over the past year. it's so funny, willy, if you're of a certain age and i'm not exactly where you fell on the time line. i suspect you were always like buckled up in the back seat, that we were trying to explain to our kids a couple of days ago that when my parents and all of us drove around would be like sitting in the front seat, we'd crawl over to the back seat in those big old cars chasing, you know, balls, throwing things, no seat belts, no nothing. and when there was this seat

belt requirement there were some people like oh, it's the federal government stepping in on our lives, but people complied for the most part. but it is crazy how it changed like that. it saved so many lives. >> well, i hesitate to tell the story but i think the statute of limitation is up from the late '70s. i still have a small scar on my forehead from the time i was jumping up and down at 4 or 5 years old in the passenger seat of car, we hit the brakes short, and yes you're absolutely right. seat belts, some people resisted for some time, but so clearly they make sense and save lives like a vaccine. still ahead we're going to have much more on a number of republican governors enforcing their will over local school boards. nbc's kerry sanders joins us from florida where several county school districts are defying the governor's order against mask mandates designed to keep children safer from covid. "morning joe" is coming back in a moment. covid. "morning joe" is coming back in a moment

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i didid't t kn whahatmy c caswa, so i called the barnes firm. i'm rich barnes. it's hard for people to k how much their accident case is worth.h barnes. t ouour juryry aorneneys hehelpou the senate passed president biden's $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill with bipartisan support. that's good news. that's positive. that's right, a trillion dollars to fix our roads, privileges and airports so after they finish la guardia, that'll leave us with about $40. well, good morning and welcome to "morning joe." it's wednesday, august 11th. another quick track to the south of france, willy. >> yeah, glad she's getting some time away. we've got a lot to talk about this morning, joey. beginning with the latest developments of covid. cases, hospitalizations, deaths still on the rise especially in

parts of the country with lower vaccination rates as we've been telling you for some time. nbc news correspondent morgan chesky has the latest. >> reporter: delta driving covid cases to dangerous highs. the variant now tied to 93% of various infections. the biggest spikes coming in texas, missouri, florida and arkansas where monday brought its largest single-day increase in hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. patients flowing into arkansas hospitals at double the national rate. >> it's worse than any of the prior surges for a whole host of reasons. >> reporter: with only eight icu beds left in the entire state, the doctor says his hospital is seeing an increase in younger patients. >> young, healthy people should not be dying from a viral illness, period. they shouldn't be dying from covid-19. but because of this particular variant is so severe, virulent and replicates very, very quickly we're seeing pretty

rapid changes to the health of individuals that are infected with the virus. >> president biden speaking out about states banning mask mandates despite the surge. >> i find that totally counter intuitive and quite frankly disingenuous. >> do you have presidential powers to intervene in states like texas and florida where they're banning mask mandates? >> i don't believe that i do thus far. we're checking that. >> reporter: in texas after multiple school districts defy the mask ban a san antonio judge issued an order allowing local schools to issue their own mandate. and in kentucky the governor demanding all schools mask up. as covid cases now top 36 million the push to vaccinate and confusion over booster shots continues. despite the fda urging no need for boosters some states like mississippi are advising doctors to consider it. as pfizer and moderna conduct their own safety trials, texas

officials confirming some people are intentionally getting more doses than they should. experts say that decision is premature. >> i don't believe most people should be going out and doing this on their own. it's going to cause a lot more confusion, and we want to look at the safety and efficacy data of third shots before we make the guidance who would benefit from it and who won't. more now on schools. thousands of children heading back to the classroom this week as the debate over vaccine and mask mandates escalates. let's bring in nbc news correspondent kerry sanders from riveria beach, florida, in palm beach county. what are you hearing there? >> reporter: well, good morning. you know, there's a real debate in this state right now about whether parents can have the schools mandate actual mask wearing because the governor has made it clear the school boards, the superintendents, they cannot do that. and if they do do that they will potentially lose their salaries, and again that would be the

superintendents and the school boards. the real constitutional question here is does the governor have the authority to withhold their salaries and essentially tell them what to do or is this local home rule in the state of florida, 67 counties, the governor has been hammering over and over again if children are going to be masked that decision will only be made by the parents. it will not be made by the government. this is what the governor here republican governor ron desantis had to say yet again on that issue. >> it's a parents decision. if you believe in the masking in the school you're free to do it. no one is saying you can't do it. but if you're somebody who's concerned about that who thinks that may not be the right thing for your child, then i think you should have the right to make that ultimate decision. i don't think governments should override that. >> reporter: i was in naples yesterday, that's collier county, first day of school there. kids are excited showing up to school, and i talked to some parents and some kids about

wearing masks. interestingly one parent with their children not wearing masks said we are not wearing masks because we believe our faith will protect us. i spoke to another family. they had their masks on, the kids had their masks on, they were all standing there. i said you're wearing masks, and they said our faith teaches us that we should wear masks to respect others. and so you can clearly see that even along religious lines people have a different take on whether the government should tell them to wear masks or whether they should wear masks. now, there is a political side to all of this, of course. and we decided to take a look at the counties in florida that have decided they're going to defy the governor and mandate mask wearing. you can see these urban counties in florida -- not all of them urban but the counties in florida that have decided, yes, we're going to mandate masks and defy the government. if we take a look at the most recent presidential election,

those that have decided to defy the governor are also the counties that supported biden. and so that clearly shows and reflects the political nature of all of this. but at the end of the day, for instance here at washington elementary here in riveria beach when kids will be coming to school today, they will be told that they need to wear masks. and there are those in this state who say why is the government trying to tell us that while others are saying absolutely the government should tell us to do that because we're seeing a rising number of covid cases. in fact, some of the children's hospital, guys, are reporting they're seeing more children with covid than they have at any other time during this pandemic. down at the hospital with ten kids in the icu one of them on a ventilator. and that tells you a lot. the one thing we don't have are the numbers in the state. and that is because the florida governor has decided that first of all covid numbers are going to be released only once a week.

and missing from that information is the age of the patients or the age ranges, which of course would be very useful for parents as they're getting ready to send their kids to school worried about the spread of the delta variant. guys? >> kerry, i'm sure you have also seen and heard from medical providers around where you are right now that a lot of the emergency rooms, a lot of the icu beds jam-packed. and also a lot of pediatric wards also jam-packed as well. talk about -- just report for us if you will the situation and how dire it has been up and down the coast of florida. >> i think the thing that struck me most is a pediatric doctor in collier county who decided she would participate in a psa, and this was a video put together by the hospital that then the school board decided to send out. and this is collier county where

they do not mandate masks. it's up to the parents and the children to decide what they're going to do. and when this doctor was on camera urging people that they should seriously consider wearing masks, she broke down, was crying and had to walk off camera. she could not get through it because of the number of children that she sees showing up in the icu. so the emotion from a doctor who let's face it doctors are front line every day with patients, and they do see some of the most horrible tragic cases of any illness in our country. if they're losing it emotionally, you understand the power that is actually hitting the children with these delta variant and with covid. and the real question is when you go through this for parents is i want my individual choice some say, but if their child winds up in the hospital they may have a very different take on why didn't we just mask everybody up.

>> and we hear that of so many people. i have a close friend i heard it from a couple days ago who in the icu and feared that death was not far away. one other thing, kerry, you said you talked to these parents and talked to other school administrators. the thing that i found is that it's not quite as bright of a red-blue line in some cases. in north florida, in places where i know i've seen you and your reporting on hurricanes sweeping across the state. i've talked to friends who were trump supporters, who were school administrators and who a couple nights ago one of my friends cut off a debate and said we're wearing masks, the delta variant is killing people, it's killing children. we're wearing masks, there'll be no debate in this school, a conservative school, a private school. and if anybody has any problems, you tell them to call me.

and this is someone who was a strong supporter of donald trump. i found in this case that, yes, there are those that you can just line it up and if they voted for trump, if they supported trump then they're on one side, biden the other. but i am seeing some former trump supporters actually look at the science, look at the medicine. and they are actually taking a break. did you find that at all in your reporting? >> i didn't. i think what struck me is some were really adamant about not wanting their children to be required to mask. and so they took them out of the public school system and put them in private schools. and now some of those private schools have mandated that they will wear masks. you know, it's a little bit of handling your political philosophy while also concerned about the health of your child

and which one is going to win out here. i think in most cases the child and the health of your child is going to be the most dominant part of making your decision of whether you want your child masked. the political side of this and this is one that the republican governor ron desantis and this is one of seven states that have said adamantly that decision can be made by the parent, it will not be made by the government. and of course a big part of this we really have to consider that should this be a governor's decision. should this be a state decision? or should local governments, the school boards that are elected, the school superintendents that are hired, should they be deciding? we just saw yesterday in broward county which is fort lauderdale, angry parents on both sides. and broward county deciding you know what, we're going to defy the governor. he can threaten to take away our salaries. we're going to do this for the children. we're going to mandate mask

wearing. and the reason we're going to mandate mask wearing is there's no do overs when this is all done. if a child gets the delta variant and winds up in the hospital and potentially dies, there's no way to undo a mistake like this. coming up we'll speak to one of those educators defying the governor in florida. our conversation with her next on "morning joe." florida. our conversation with her next on "morning joe. welcome to allstate. (phone notification) where we've just lowered our auto rates. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ and savings like that will have you jumping for joy. now, get new lower auto rates with allstate. because better protection costs a whole lot less. you're in good hands with allstate. click or call for a lower auto rate today.

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really, it just makes me scratch my head when i hear reports of parents saying we're going to ignore doctors, we're going to ignore science and jesus is going to take care of our children so we can act reckless, medically.

jesus can -- do they think jesus decided to kill over 600,000 people with the covid virus? it's -- i'd say it's beyond anything i've seen except sadly it's consistent with much of what i've seen over the past five years. other than now in we have parents willingly sending their kids into schools less safe than medicine suggests they could be or their doctors, their own family doctors would suggest they could be if they took some simple precautions. >> people are free not to take the vaccine. that's absolutely their right, but it has implications for other people. so you may not go into a public setting for a school, for example. we heard kerry talking about some of the school districts defying the governor. yesterday on the show we spoke with the superintendent of public schools, she is pushing

back on governor desantis' ban on masks in schools despite his threat to with hold money from her district. >> threatening to cut our funding is a concern, but i think really when i reflect on the job i need to do, then this is just something i'm going to have to push forward. i need to provide a secure, safe school environment that's constitutionally mandated to my students, and i believe that i need to just focus on my job and make sure that i'm providing that opportunity for the students. and i believe i am with the mask mandate. >> in our interview dr. simon told us about a letter she received from richard corcoran where he pressured her to follow the governor's order and respond by 5:00 tomorrow evening. and dr. simon is back with us this morning with her response. it's great to have you on. i want to read for our audience

part of your response. quote, the failure to use all of the mitigations strategies available including masks will inevitably mean that some of our students will have to receive their education outside the school setting. we share the governor's view this is not the desired outcome. the death or serious illness of a child as a result of covid-19 exposure is a far more serious injury than any discomfort that may be experienced due to universal masking. dr. simon goes on, "we ask you seriously consider the appropriateness of withholding funds amount equal to the superintendent's salary and salaries of members of the school board" universally masking is the most effective strategy we currently have besides vaccination to meet this obligation." when we talked to you yesterday you were trying to get ready for the first day of school and check on your kids and teachers and get a difficult school year under way but then you had to deal with this.

tell us a bit about what went into this letter and what weighed on you as you wrote it? >> well, so we've been, you know, examining the letter as far as what the argument the commissioner of education had. and then we compared it to how we see it. in our situation especially associated with our data and today or yesterday was the first day. and so we did get to kind of see in action what we were concerned about occurring. just as an example our largest high school, the entire football team minus students who have been vaccinated will be quarantined. my staff attorney has allowed me to share that she was not feeling well, and she actually went home ill. and she actually is vaccinated. and so we've been predicting this is going to have an enormous impact on how we

perform our function as a school district. so those are just two examples of how this delta variant is really impacting everything. and these are anecdotal. it just started. i did find out we had a parent who tested positive who dropped off their children to school. this is under the assumption parents are making decisions that are considerate of the public health and i'm not seeing that across the board. >> so you had a mask mandate in for the first couple weeks of school, kids show up at your school district yesterday. how many were wear masks, and what did you have to say to those who weren't? >> as far as entering the building all of them needed to mask. we're still trying to find out if we had any concerns that happened throughout the day because obviously it's a long day and, you know, things can occur. so we're still looking into that and examining it. we did have parents who came at the front door who wanted their

children to enter and did not want to follow our mandate, and we ended up having 25 submit the medical opt out form. we also had five people who asked to participate in the hope scholarship program. we did have a situation where one child was dropped off without a mask and the parent did not answer the phone and that child waited in the clinic. and, you know, we are -- we are not going to allow a situation where somebody who disagrees with our policies is allowed to do whatever they please. >> yeah, doctor, let me ask you how many vaccines do children need to have to start public school in your county? >> off the top of my head i don't know. if i were to just, you know, remember as a parent signing my

children up for school i'd say there was quite a few of them. and then of course you have them throughout their childhood. it's just always a thing. and then we also encourage flu shots every single year at our school districts. that's a program with a lot of participation. >> it's interesting. i think like i remember 5 or 6 i had four kids and they all got five or six vaccines. it's interesting you and i are of an age. i'm about 80 years older than you i'm sure where we were also required to get vaccines or else we couldn't go to school. do you find it bizarre that you're having to explain to human beings that have lived over the past 40, 50, 60 years, like the purpose of vaccinations, the purpose -- why we vaccinate our children or why we protect our children even if let's say polio, for instance --

my kids all got polio shots, you did, my kids did. everybody got polio shots. they have hardly any chance of getting polio. but the desire of the government was to eradicate polio from the face of the earth. this is something that we have known for 50, 60 years and yet these people coming to you they act as if this is first vaccine that's ever been administered. i'm curious how do you respond to that? how do you react to parents who act so shocked that either their kids if they're of a certain age need a vaccination or need to wear masks to prevent this disease from spreading? >> well, so i share that same observation in the sense where i mean both my parents have this scar on their arm where they did

what was that the smallpox vaccine -- i'm not even sure what that was. it's funny because i remember i keep talking to them about it, and it was a mark of pride that they were members of their community, this is what they did to eradicate this disease within the community. and so i remember those types of stories. and as a parent myself i have vaccinated my children because i think there's like that collective component as well as protecting your child. right now i do find it very hard to understand the resistance. i can understand, you know, some people are resistant to change and new, and i get that. but i feel strongly that, you know, we only function well in my mind if we all are collective and we work together. community matters to me, and this seems to me to be just a

foundational act of being a member of a community. everything is bigger than us and more than us. and i don't understand why we can't find common ground that protecting life is actually something we all should be doing. >> so dr. simon, as i read through your letter one part jumped out at me because it was so specific. you said you asked to the commissioner you seriously consider the appropriateness of withholding funds in an amount equal to the superintendent's salary and the combined salaries of the members of the school board. is that what the state is threatening you with, if you put this mask mandate, we're going to take away your salaries? is that what they've told you? >> that's what they've shared on the news. it's interesting because they don't control how funding is allocated to our employees. for example, our organization, our district we are the ones who distribute paychecks and bonuses and all of those components. so actually saying they're not going to pay me or the board

members, that's really not quite an accurate statement. they are taking that funding out of our general fund, they're removing that allocation for moneys that would come to the district in order for us to provide the education to our students. so i guess you can think it through that way in his mind, but it's actually not that way in the reality of how the moneys come into the district is how they're distributed out. >> so the state says we might take your money away, you say i'm keeping the masks on, what gives here? might you have to work for free this year? >> i am going to run this school district and take care of my families and the community and the students and my teachers and my staff members. and if that is what it's going to take, that's what it's going to take. i'm not going to let some component like this, you know, a material thing stop us from doing the right thing.

>> well, it seems obvious to so many people but it's actually a brave act to protect your children in the state of florida. superintendent of -- county public schools dr. carly simon, thanks so much for being with us this morning. we'll check back in with you this week. coming up, our next guest was recently described as no one's ally. we'll talk to andrew sullivan whose new collection of essays tackles some of the most contentious issues in american life. that conversation straight ahead on "morning joe." one, two! one, two, three! only pay for what you need! with customized car insurance from liberty mutual! nothing rhymes with liberty mutual.

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8:31 in the morning, beautiful live picture of the white house. domippian voting systems filed a lawsuit yesterday against news max -- seeking more than $1.6 billion in each suit. "the wall street journal" reports dominion accused of the two networks of airing false

reports that its machines switched votes from president donald trump to mr. biden. the company also said former overstock executive patrick burn repeatedly and falsely alleged dominion rigged vote tallies to steal the election from mr. biden. nauz max said it's simply repeated claims by public figures and one american news did not immediately respond to request for comment. joe, it turns out there are consequence tuesday the big lie for some people. >> yes, there are. let's bring in right now long time journalist and writer andrew sullivan. he's out with a collection of 60 of his pieces titled "out on a limb." back with us reverend al sharpton and also senator claire mccaskill. andrew, i'm so excited to have you on here because i've been saying for the past several years you're the most important writer in america certainly to explain the trump era. and i always got the same

response back from those who knew and love you. that's awesome but he doesn't wake up early so appreciate you waking up early. i just want to read the conclusion. i can read the whole thing but david french's review of your book was so beautiful. i just want to read the last paragraph. he said the snapshots of recent history, read it to better understand the many journeys of one of america's most important public intellectuals but most of all read this book to see what it looks like when a thoughtful man tries his best to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. and as he says, andrew, and it's the highest compliment i think any of us could pay anyone in this business because you are on no one's side. first of all, how much did you have to pay, david, for that wonderful review. secondly, seriously your thoughts on his view of your

book? it's just i thought a beautiful piece. >> i thought it was stunning. and to be honest with you i was really shocked to read it in "the new york times." and look, you do your best in your career to the tell the truth as you see it. and at any moment in time that can be extremely controversial or people can have extreme feelings about it. but i hope that over the long haul the ability to stick with what you really see in front of your eyes has a long-term credibility advantage, that the people know you're not lying, you're not trying to spin. you're honestly trying to get it right. and you will get it wrong, of course, and i have. in the book i have a whole essay on what i got wrong about iraq. and i think that helps feel it matters. just don't look at the news cycle. look at the long-term. look at exactly how consistent a person has been or how at least how earnest they are in

correcting their own mistakes and subjecting themselves to a certain amount of humility in the face of extraordinary events that we cannot understand as they are happening and do our best to make sense of. >> you know, i have said all along at the end of iraq that iraq ended up making fools of us all. many people who opposed going to iraq opposed the surge, supported getting out immediately, quickly. but again you can say that about your entire career. even the most brilliant among us going out on that limb, fighting the good fight, sometimes getting it right but sometimes getting it terribly wrong. this -- this sort of journey makes fools even of the brightest of us, even the best of us. and of course i speak of you here. >> and it does. i think many of us got several things wrong over the last 25 years. and the consequences of that are with us today.

that war was a terrible mistake. deregulating the economies of 2008 happening was a terrible mistake. people are not wrong to be angry and understand where the accountability is. unless we provide our own accountability people are going to go to someone like trump who will betray all of us. i agree trump is absolutely a threat to us. but to lose sight of everything else and get too fixated on that is like getting too fixated on defeating this virus as opposed to getting back to our lives. that's the question. is it the big long perspective you're hoping for? and readers in the end they get you. those who don't want to read you will not read you, and those who like you will like you. and you'll lose some and win some. but the key is consistency and the key is understanding what you do not know. and conservatism used to be about that humility, about

saying we don't know everything, we can't fix everything, we're going to have a limited government, we're going to let people try and figure out their own problems. but when things emerge and we have a practical answer, we'll figure it out. and now it's become a cult. and watching that happen over the past 30 years has been really depressing. if you have any sympathy for the conservative temperament and movement. >> andrew, last night i was talking about a conversation i had earlier with claire. but last night we were talking about the consequential changes not only for women but also for race issues over the past 10, 20, 25 years. but we were talking about what was the most consequential change and i think everyone around the table said the speed that we got from your essays from 89 and 93 in marriage

equality to marriage equality was absolutely just spellbinding, mesmerizing. still hard to believe how quickly things change from 2004 when the bush administration was using it or the bush campaign team was using it to pull people out against marriage equality to 2013. what are your thoughts as someone who's long been considered perhaps the most influential thinker on this issue? >> well, you can see in the first essay i'm saying i'm not crazy, hold on, don't get too mad at me but here's an idea. and over the years you can see how it gets slightly more traction. and here's what i took from it. i took from the people who tell you this country is irredeemable, this country is sort of inherently bigoted, when you actually engage in the old liberal process of making arguments, listening to your opponents, getting out there not caring who you're talking to,

you want to get your message across, engaging fundamentalests, talking to your own families. people took real courage in coming out. this was a triumph of liberal democracy. we didn't rig it. we didn't yell at anyone. we didn't demonize straight people as somehow the enemy. we tried to find things we had in common with the majority and unite over that. we tried to see we were actually members of families and wanted to rejoin our families. when you make that kind of good faith argument and you do it sincerely and you do it again and again and again, people in this country are prepared to change their minds and they change their minds. and to see that happen in my lifetime, i will never become pessimistic about this country. >> the speed was absolutely staggering, still hard to believe. in 2009 you start warning about the reich. you start warning about even

though your conservative, even though you're christian, you start sending up warning flares as david french said about where evangelical movement was moving and where the right was moving. let me ask you as a guy who grew up in a southern baptist church and has been concerned, similarly concerned, are you surprised by how far it moved in donald trump's direction and where it finds itself now in large part fighting vaccinations, fighting medicine, fighting the protection of even their own family members? >> well, on one hand i was a little surprised because i think many of us fail to acknowledge just how much trade policies, immigration policies had affected people, working class people in the middle of this country and we weren't

listening. i think we should have understood that better and got in there earlier. but, look, america's a crazy place. i'm from the outside. when you look at this country do things like have an entire bloody civil war, this country banned alcohol for everyone. this country has these movements and these spasms. it's still alive and young. and so the idea that in a really gridlocked democracy that somebody would come along and say i alone can fix it, have the talent to persuade people and to exploit people that way, was always going to happen at some point. i mean the founders understood this would happen. we just about survived but not very well, and we have a long way to rebuild that. but america is a crazy place. as i said you never know what -- the idea that a black president would be elected and re-elected twice in this country, that's as astonishing as donald trump. and so i would look forward to

what america's going to deliver next. and that's the way the world looks here because this is where the future is actually made. but, yeah, i think the conservatism started going off the rails in the '90s. i had a piece talking about the ken starr report which is when i got off the train and the refusals to acknowledge the errors in iraq, the double down, the belief we in america can torture people, we can borrow money, we can spend money, we don't even care about the deficit, these are such betrayals of conservatism, and we have a long way to go to rebuild that. and we're going to have to adjust those on questions of immigration of trade, on those questions where the effects of the policies have really hurt people. capitalism is not working right now. it's not working for most people. and if you're a conservative that should worry you and so instead of dedefending

capitalism you should ask yourselves how can we make it more legitimate? so i think tackling inequality is also the course. if you look at britain where i'm from the tourists have managed this very populist right wing theory and bring it into the existing institutions. in this country the republicans have become part of that explosion have no control over it. and until they get rid of trump if they can, that's going to be the case. >> andrew, it's willie geist. congratulations on the book. i think your writing and thinking has always stood out is because in this moment there's always few people for going out on a limb because they fear it getting sawed-off. you have people on the right wondering what the right thing is or virtue signaling on social media. o why in your assessment are there not more andrew sullivans, people who are willing to upset

both sides in our political media culture right now? >> well, because even i got fired last year. the atmosphere in mainstream media and i'll say this with all seriousness has become so oppressive. the fear of saying something that might offend someone has become so great. a single statement that might be faulty in which their entire career is destroyed over this. there's a fanaticism in the newsrooms around woke ideology that is really chilling the discourse, that is discouraging younger journalists and younger thinkers from saying what they think and also encouraging everybody to the furthest extreme of uniformity. we should be able to argue, and we should be able to argue without everybody's feelings being constantly wounded. we can't go forward if we don't have a certain amount of

resilience, self-understanding. i remember eleanor roosevelt. no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. believe in yourself. fight bigotry that way. stop putting the onus on everyone around you. start building your own life and explaining what it's like to be a minority. being a minority is not the worst thing in the world. it has some wonderful joys to it, some wonderful aspects to it. when in fact if you look at it the other way around everything is freedom, too. and we can channel that freedom if we want to. and i think we've lost our nerve. and i think it's because there are beliefs and social media which has made all this far worse. and i decide i have to keep doing this because if i don't, who will? i have enough cred at this point to be able to do it myself, and

i'm trying to do that to encourage other people not to be afraid. it's okay to be wrong. just acknowledge it. it's a good thing sometimes because then you can get yourself right. and i think over your lifetime you're constantly adjusting to changing circumstances. and the principles for me at least is don't do too much, keep government small, be prudent and encourage individual responsibility and freedom. very simple really, very reagan-like really. and i still regard myself as a kind of reagan conservative who feels very much estranged from the world right now. >> andrew, al sharpton. i have read you down through the years, and you have been controversial. as someone who's never been controversial, i've admired you going out on a limb. but let me ask you this, the fact i agree with you even on some of your attacks on what i call lofty liberals on the left

and on the right, how does cancel culture represent a real threat to our ability to grow and to really understand each other in this country and not be canceled so immediately if you make one step or one move that can be interpreted in a way that ends your whole career? this whole cancel culture thing we're dealing with now? how do you assess its danger? >> it's really dangerous. we're all human. we're all going to make horrible mistakes. we're also going to be in our off moments human as well. the great thing you and i share in a religious faith, in christianity is redemption. and that's originally what fueled the civil rights movement, this christian idea we'll forgive the people that hate us and that will make us

stronger. and sometimes we've lost that sense. and the woke movement has no mercy, has no forgiveness and no redemption. it just condemns and ostracizes. now, this is a mood, a mood that happens in america. it happened in salem, the hollywood blacklist, happened with the lavender scare. americans have this moral panic capacity like they did in the '90s with child care if you remember. and i think you just have to tone the zealotry down to say wrg look, come on, we're not hateful. we try to act in good faith. there are hateful people but don't assume everyone on the other side are the worst of their kind. engage an argument. sometimes you engage an argument that may hurt peoples feelings, and it may hurt them profoundly. in the book i have a piece addressed to my old colleague saying forgive me because i have raised some really difficult

issues and i'm sorry. i felt it was necessary to do it, but i'm a human and i love you and i don't want to hurt you. and i did. and i think some of that is part of the necessity of being a journalist, sometimes your principles can have real impact on your friendships, and i'm lucky to have great friends but i'm also aware of the costs sometimes of saying things people really do not want to hear. >> andrew, claire mccaskill here. as somebody who has had the far right and far left both mad at me at the same time, i really relate to so many of your writings. i'd like you to spend a minute, though, talking about afghanistan. your writings about iraq were very powerful in terms of your changing your mind about that mistake. we're now looking at a situation where our country has really spent so much lives, injuries, a

trillion dollars. we've trained 300,000 afghans to fight for their country, and clearly they are not doing that now because they outnumber the taliban. talk a little bit about what your place is now in terms of your attitude as it relates to afghanistan. >> well, enthusiast, if you remember, for these wars, in good faith, really. it was not a malevolent idea, it was a fact that we have to protect ourselves from religious fanatics. i wasn't conservative enough. i didn't understand culture properly, i didn't realize you can't walk into these countries with their complex histories, tribal patterns, religious obsessions and somehow make them into new jersey in five years with the sons and daughters of americans. it was insane, in retrospect. and what i've tried to do since

is say, what did we learn? there are some things we cannot do, that we're trying too hard to achieve the impossible. not only that, but we did it with the sons and daughters of working class americans of all races who bore the brunt of this, while people like me stayed at home and just licked our wounds. and i feel shame about it. i do feel shame about it. and i think, therefore, one has to reformulate one's ideas and argue for much more humble foreign policy, one that's much more restrained, one that seeks the defense of americans and not transformation of the world. we need to advance our interests against china, we need to figure that question out, which is really hard. but we must keep in our minds, we are not miracle workers. we can't go around the world changing history. it's so arrogant top think that. and i was caught up with the

fear and the passion around this religious fundamentalism, but i was wrong. and i want to contribute to a prudent, moderate policy, and i support joe biden in this absolutely 100%, and i think it's amazing that he's the one that actually had the balls to do this. >> let's finish up here. we're short on time. but i just have to ask you, you have a positive outlook on america and the future of america. i wonder about one of the issues you've talked about the most over the past year or two, the wokeness on college campuses and newsrooms. have you seen any positive trend line? we had cornell west on a month or two ago, who was critical of the decision to remove classics department from howard, and he said we have to study the classics. you quoted martin luther king in a 2018 piece, also believing in the importance of the classics. reverend sharpton comes on

repeatedly and talks about latte liberals and pushing back against the wokeness that he believes at the end of the day probably hurts the truly disadvantaged more than anyone else. do you see positive trend lines in this area? >> yes, i do. i see a growing generation of people that really find that unattractive. i think the bullying tactics are putting people off. i think the platform for independent writers have provided an outlet for others who have been rejected from the mainstream media and we're competing back in the free market and we'll see if they adjust in response. i look at the moderate working class african-american voters who made joe biden the nominee and who made eric adams the mayor of new york city. that is the center of the democratic party, not this elite tend to be white left liberal elites. they're not really the heart and

soul. they're the heart and soul of twitter, but twitter is not reality, thank god. and the democrats, you know, they've won so many arguments on economics now, people like me have moved to the left on economics. take that advantage. don't screw it up with this toxic racialization of everything, this toxics identity which pit us all against each other as opposed to in favor of each other and see what's in common with each other. i think these things come in waves and i'm hanging in. and i know it's depressing and i know so many of these institutions are not allowing diversity of view. we have a first amendment, we have a vibrant culture, we fight back and we create something interesting and fun. and we're doing fine. i've been shocked by how many people have come. so you've got to have hope, joe. you've got to believe people

will get fed up with this. and i think the next generation after z is going to be hating gen-z. they're nasty, toxic. who wants to live that way? you want to have fun again, you want to feel empathy again. it's so sexless and humanless and interpersonalably horrible. i don't want to live like that, and at some point people will say i don't want to live like this anymore. >> leaving the set with a collection of haymakers, the new collection is titled "out on a limb". andrew sullivan, it was great having you on. now to the global citizens fight to defend the planet and defeat poverty. >> on september 25th, the biggest artists on the plan unite with world leaders to demand action on our biggest challenges. >> global citizen live, from new

york, paris, lagos, and other locations around the world. join us for a once in a generation 24-hour global event to defend the planet and defeat poverty. >> together, we can move the world. >> one action at a time. >> the show will feature star-studded lineups, including coldplay, billie eilish just to name a few. let's bring you to co-founder and ceo to global citizen, hugh evans. we've talked about this a good bit and what you have lined up is extraordinary. also, the coverage, if you just look at the bbc channels, if you look at all the channels around the world that are covering this, it's got to be the biggest event at least since live aid back in the mid-'80s. >> thank you so much for having me on your show. yes, we're so excited about global citizen live, because this is, as you say, a once in a generation opportunity to bring the whole world together to

fight the issues of defending the planet and defeating poverty. and we're timing it deliberately alongside the u.n. general assembly meeting, just prior to the cop26 climate negotiations and the g20 summit and this is an opportunity to go all around the world, bigger than global citizen has ever gone before. we're going to be coming to you live from lagos, nigeria, paris, rio, sydney, and more to be announced. and most importantly, this isn't just a celebration. this is a moment of unity to fight for the issues that are so urgent facing humanity, that is really defending the planet and defeating poverty. >> you're getting rock's biggest acts and superstars globally, but you're also getting a lot of support from world leaders, which of course is the key. you all using your influence to influence them to use their

positions to end poverty globally. talk about that. >> yes, joe. so far, over 35 governments have signed on to endorse the global citizen live campaign, and that ranges from leaders like president macron of france, we're in active conversations with the white house at present. but we've also had incredible engagement from the european commission. and these heads of state are really responding to the calls to action from global citizen. this year, our policy objectives are focused on really three big things. firstly, we want to make sure that the world responds to the urgent climate challenge as we saw in the ipcc report just a few days ago, that highlighted that there is an urgent need to act now on climate change. secondly, we're responding to the hunger crisis currently afflicting 41 million people on the horn of africa, and thirdly, the ongoing issue of vaccine

equity, if we're going to get covid-19 under control we need to get 1 billion doses to those who need it most by the end of september. and we're finding that world leaders are responding to this call to action and are stepping up. we're also finding that the private sector across america is stepping up. we have wonderful co-chair partners like cisco, verizon, delta, p&g, salesforce, coke, are stepping up to be part of the movement. >> hugh, you've been -- this has been a lifetime effort for you. we greatly appreciate you being here to talk to us about this. we're just at the beginning. we've got a month and a half until the event actually goes off and we expect you to come back regularly and update us and let us know how we can help. >> thank you, joe. and i hope we can count on you to see you in paris with us. it would be amazing to have you. >> okay, thank you so much. i hope mika lets me go.

thank you so much. greatly appreciate it. that does it for us this morning. stephanie ruhle picks up the coverage right now. hi there. i'm stephanie ruhle. it's wednesday, august 11th, and this morning we are watching several major stories. just a few minutes ago we got the latest look at how bad inflation really is, and it's bad, with prices up 5.4% over this time last year. so is it the right time for lawmakers to work on a massive $3.5 trillion spending package? what matters to voters? on the covid front, the delta variant now tied to 93% of cases across this nation, with multiple states in the south seeing their largest single-day spike in hospitalizations since the start of the pandemic. the ceo of united airlines will be here to talk about his decision to require