should be keeping an eye on? >> definitely, yeah. texas, georgia, arizona are states that are going to be incredibly important. remember, the congress is only divided by seats. this is the narrowest majority any party has had in 20 years. so any district if any state can control the house. democrats will have control of new york, illinois and maryland, so those are three places to watch. and the republicans have the sunbelt. >> ally, thank you for being here. and thank you to all of you at home for getting up "way too early" with us on this friday morning. i'll see you back here on monday. and in just a few minutes, "morning joe" starts right now. if you build it, he will come.

♪♪ >> and look at where we are. is this magical or what? welcome to the "field of dreams." >> hey, is this heaven? >> no. it's iowa. >> how exciting. it is amazing. the new york yankees, the chicago white sox. they 'surrounded by hollywood

movie stars. just a move set, "field of dreams," they got to do that yesterday. and, of course, my boston red sox were playing out the end of the season yesterday. there were three grounds crew keepers there. the street preacher. an old hound dog. and that was it as we lost another game in miserable fashion. this game last night, this was special. i still remember back in '76 watching mark fuddridge pitch on monday night baseball. it was one of those moments in the middle of a long baseball season where everybody stopped and watched what was going on. it was a magical night. last night, even though it didn't end up exactly how yankees fans would like it to

end up, another magical night for major league baseball. >> it was. i was thinking the same thing watching it. there are so many events that don't punch through in our crowded media, that did feel special. kevin costner, he did a great job where he was walking through the corn, narrating the open, and stepping out and doing the emmy acting there waiting for the guys to walk out to the corn. hats off to major league baseball, iowa and the teams. the field in iowa was a launching pad, the home runs were jumping out of there. it was a special night. it really was. in the ninth inning last night, down 7-4, aaron judge hits a two-run home run in the ninth, pulls the yankees within 7-6, a couple batters later, john

carlos stanton gets a home run, think we got one, pulling within one game of the red sox in the standings. and then in the bottom of the ninth, tim anderson jacks one into the corn in rightfield for a walk-off home run, 9-8 white sox, they win the game on a truly special night in iowa. >> it was a special night. jonathan lemire, you know, this is something that we had heard about a couple years ago and my boys were saying let's circle the calendar. of course, we couldn't get out there. but it was a special night. by the way, just as an aside, you're probably looking -- the chicago white sox, you're probably looking at a team that will probably play the yankees for the american leg

championship. these two great teams. >> last night was really special evening. it was major league baseball pulled it off. this was a hollywood set and the game had the theatrics to match. it did draw people. my twitter time line was nothing but the game. my boys and i watched. they're big baseball fans and they were drawn to this. it was fun and major league baseball said this was such a success they want to do it again. perhaps an annual tradition, at the very least do it again next year in this "field of dreams," iowa. we know the movie is one to bring grown men to tears. and i know when tim anderson hit that home run for the walk off, i was sobbing with joy. >> of course you were. you were also sobbing a couple

hours earlier when the red sox fortunes hit their lowest of lows. even the hound dog watching in the stands had to turn away and walk away in the ninth inning. but anyway, special game last night. >> it was. got a lot of news this morning. boy, i guess it was predictable but it's moving so quickly in afghanistan it's hard to keep up with the cities that have fallen. this morning right before we came on the air, kandahar was hadded to the list of the towns falling to taliban control. >> people saw it coming but not so quickly. the taliban continues to gain control of afghanistan quickly the group captured another two capitals in the southern part of the country, they overtook the key city of kandahar, the second

largest city in the country, as well as the third largest, herat. they're deserting cities, some changing sides to fight with the taliban. residents are fleeing to kabul but some officials say soon even the capital may be taken over. the biden administration is rushing 3,000 troops to the airport to help with the evacuation of the embassy. it's a sign of waning confident in the afghan's ability to hold off the surge. this as officials tell "the new york times" american negotiators are trying to get assurances from the taliban that they will not attack the u.s. embassy in kabul. nonessential personnel had

already been withdrawn from the embassy back in april. despite the exit, state department spokesman ned price insisted yesterday that the united states has not given up on the afghan people. >> the message we are sending to the people of afghanistan is one of enduring partnership. this is not abandonment, this is not an evacuation. this is not the wholesale withdrawal. what this is is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. >> let's bring in nato supreme allied commander retired four star. also with us senior fellow at the council on foreign relations gayle lemon.

and peter baker. admiral let me start with you. we said this was perhaps not surprising except for the pace. what do you make of what's happening as we speak in afghan? >> that's a good summary, especially on friday the 13th. it is a bad day for the government in kabul. staying with the baseball theme it feels like the ninth inning. think kandahar that's like los angeles falling. herat, that's chicago. these are big cities, big population centers. so i think you categorize it about right, willie, which is to say many of us were predicting this would happen but the speed is quite remarkable. and you have to ask yourself why? why this collapse? considering we had trained the afghans, we had supplied them with superb equipment. they really had the tools to defend and they might still be

able to put a perimeter around kabul but that looks doubtful. deployment of the u.s. troops is good. we want to avoid a complete collapse and saigon moment. we can avoid that. moving the troops in makes sense to me. but this administration appears quite clear they're going to cut the cord and get out. so we have to be thinking about follow on steps in an event that ensures american citizens, our allies, those who worked alongside us, the interpreters, for example, can get out as well. very dark moment. >> the american people, admiral, support this move. and yet i'm still surprised at our rapid removal. ed price at the state department said this wasn't abandonment, it wasn't evacuation.

it's exactly what it is. i just wonder, admiral, how the united states of america maintains security not just for everybody else's interest but for our own self-interest if we can't keep 2500, 3,000, 4,000 troops in a country like afghan, like syria, and in other hot spots where we've now figured out over 20 years, everybody is going to be talking about what we learned in the past 20 years. well, we figured out how to have a small footprint in places like syria and afghanistan and at the same time, stop the russians, iranians, the taliban, the turks from advancing. what do you think of politicians that aren't willing to put troops in hot spots when most of those troops want to be there and are upset when they're

withdrawn. >> the way to think about this, joe, is leverage. in other words what can you gain with relatively small footprint, relatively low cost in a very strategic place. look at a map. afghanistan is parked in the middle of the russia, china, pakistan, india. it's sitting on top of a trillion dollars in rare earths and lithium which goes in every car battery ever made. there's a lot of reason to want to keep stability in afghanistan, by the way, starting with the fact that when it's uncovered it becomes a launch pad for things like 9/11, doing it with 150,000 troops when i commanded that mission it had 150,000 troops. that's not cost-effective. but doing it with 3,500 to 5,000 troops that makes a lot of sense to me. i agree with your premises we are failing in keeping the leverage here.

at this point there's really no way back i can see for the administration. >> gayle, we're already hearing horror stories of what the taliban is doing to women and girls who had in some respects been protected, allowed to step out into society the last 20 years or so. what are you hearing on the ground on that angle of the story as the united states of america pleads with the taliban to not attack its embassy in kabul. >> the taliban is not just at the door, they're in the house. the question is how do you have enough space and time to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe play out before the cameras and the world. my phone yesterday was filled with young women who months before were high school students dreaming of becoming doctors and teachers. now they have very real fears of becoming taliban brides.

the question is, how do we avoid worst case scenarios and create space so some of the worst case scenarios that have not yet played out don't happen. two years went by, 1994 to 1996, when kandahar fell and taliban took kabul. i don't think anyone expects that now. i was talking to a young woman yesterday who was trying to figure out what she does with her family. she's an activist who's spoken out for women and girls' participation in the political process. and she does not know what her mom and dad are going to do. another young person reached out to me and said, you know, i taught myself coding. i'm ready to study robotics, engineering, but i had to flee because i was getting taliban threats but my mom and dad are still there, can you help me. and a u.s. special operation veteran who wrote me and said i got my interpreter out but his

wife is there or his family is there because he had come out several years earlier. so all of this is playing out in very real time and the stakes are high. one young woman i talked to, she studied at basically an s.a.t. prep center bombed by, most likely, isis. now she's trying to figure out how to come out of tomorrow. i think those are the very real stakes. >> peter baker, we did know this was going to happen, and we also knew when we withdrew our troops that it was going to be young girls, it was going to be women. the very young girls, the women, the very people who over the past 20 years we had assured them that they could go to

school, they could get a job, they could start their own businesses, and we would protect them. ned price at the state department talked about how the united states was not abandoning afghanistan. well, we are. this is an abandonment, this is an abandonment that the sec dev opposed. the chairman of the joint chiefs did the same. as we all know, most of washington's foreign policy establishment knew this was a bad move and this was going to happen and we were going to see these stories every day for possibly years. and yet, joe biden, decided to move forward with this. again wanting to do what donald trump had wanted to do over the past several years. the question is, what was in joe

biden's background. i know going back to 2009 he had contempt for afghanistan leadership. but what was in his background that had him move forward and damn all the torpedos despite what he had to know what was going to happen. >> it's a remarkable situation. joe, i was there on the ground 20 years ago this fall. within just days of 9/11, before the cia showed up, the special forces showed up, as a reporter, covering afghanistan and i saw what it was like when the taliban was in charge. the idea we'd be here 20 years later, almost 20 years to the day from 9/11, seeing the country turn right back to where it was is a remarkably dark moment. and you're right, i think that president biden had ever reason to know this was going to

happen. nobody should be surprised by any of them. it's striking, but not surprising. because, you know, everybody said this is what would happen. the pentagon told the white house this is what's going to happen. we've seen this movie before, when you hear what's talking with the biden administration folks, which is cold calculation, yeah, this is going to happen. but we have given it 20 years, it's up to the afghans now to take care of their own country we're washing our hands of it. we'll make sure our own people are safe and there's some commitment to helping some afghans who helped us over the years, but it's a cold calculation. you don't hear empathy right now from joe biden or the administration for the people of afghanistan who are going to suffer as a result. the people that gayle has been in cutch with in the last few days and others. you're hearing stories already

of atrocities and the kind of things we saw back in the '90s when the taliban did have brief control of the country. and the pictures and the stories that will emanate in the weeks and months to come will be a humanitarian crisis in the making. but the calculation is what you said, joe, the american people are tired of it, they don't want to be there anymore, they don't think we have to be there anymore. it's not our country. it's up to the afghans to take care of themselves, we did what we could. it's time to get out. >> admiral, talking about the united states of america and our place in the world. we're not aruba or luxenburg. we can't wash our hands of a situation because we grow tired or bored of it, even if stupid people are writing articles in newspapers or talking about the forever war as if we had 150,000

troops there. this is -- for some reason, and i don't know why, this was never framed like we framed sending troops to germany after world war ii or sending troops to south korea after the korean war. this was a very small footprint. about as small of a footprint as you can possibly have. can you explain why the united states can't say we're tired of this we're going to leave iraq. we're tired of this, we're just going to leave afghanistan. we've done enough. if they lose, tough luck. can you explain if people haven't been paying attention in the past two decades what happens when the united states says we're bored, we're going home? >> yeah, let's start with the high potential in my view that the taliban come back, go back to being international pyorrhea and permit al qaeda to come back

into play. they have lied about everything they said previous to this, so why we think there's going to be a taliban 2.0 that provide human rights -- not going to happen. that push out al qaeda, not going to happen. so we have a risk to our allies. second to your point, what does this look like globally when people see us step away from a problem as you say. by the way, we've seen almost this exact movie in iraq where we stepped away from the problem, got frustrated. what happened? the islamic state came back and got within 50 miles of baghdad. and we went back in and put together a good mission, about 3,500 troops which have stiffened the iraqi army, that could have been the case here. in any event, good deal, bad

deal. this is a gun deal. i don't think the administration is going to come back and you're going to see both risk to the homeland, in my view, and secondly a deterioration in how our allies think about us and who's the upside? the upside is for russia and china who point to this as they consolidate gains globally. >> what everyone feared that afghanistan returns to what it was on september 10, 2001. so the argument from the white house straightforward, 20 years is enough, time to come home we're not going to risk anymore american lives there. let's leave. now 3,000 troops are going in temporarily anyway to help the evacuation of the embassy. do you see any opening for a pivot from the administration as it watches what's in afghanistan. is there any policy for change that troops will return to afghanistan? >> no. at least not yet or any time

soon. we heard from the president a few days ago when he was asked if he had any regrets about his decision, he did not. he believed this a long time. officials that i talked to in the administration over the defense department say there isn't a plan right now for any sort of course correction. they are taken aback by how fast this is happening. they suspected the taliban would make advances but not that the military would collapse in p such rapid fashion and by the hour another territory or city falls to them. i think we've heard from president biden, he has been consistent for years, more than a decade now, about the u.s. mission in afghan. he said in some ways the u.s. set out what it wanted to do, stop afghan from being a safe harborer for terrorists anymore. but to the admiral's point, that's what keeps the national security establishment up at night, it could once again be the safe harbor, a place from

which attacks are launched. and that would cast a new light on this decision and potentially lead to even more second guessing of this troop withdrawal. which we're only accelerating by the day with the security situation in kabul deteriorating, including at the u.s. embassy. at least for now, we expect this is a story line that's going to dominate the administration for the days ahead, there's no work to send troops on the mission. it's one that officials we talked to late last night that officials say they're watching carefully. >> gayle, you spoke so movingly about all the s.o.s.es you received yesterday from girls, young women in afghanistan. what's your fear of what's going to happen in the coming weeks,

months, and do you have any reason to hope these women may find a way? >> there's always hope. i think to your point this is the united states and we have diplomatic muscle and leverage. we actually can exercise. it's not the same as it was six months, 12 months or 18 months ago. and i think those of us who have been watching and living afghanistan since 2001, 2003, 2005, can in some way judge our age by the number of afghanistan policy reviews we have been part of or adjacent to. my first book i had the privilege of writing was about a teenager whose business supported her family. all these girls that were breadwinners. so i have no doubt that women will go through an incredibly dark period but will find a way because that's what they do, that's their superpower. watch what happens in kabul.

all these powers are in doe har right now. china, pakistan, russia are all playing roles, whether overtly. can we get to a point where you buy some space and time in kabul to evacuate the people who have been america's and nato's allies. and then buy some time to figure out a little bit of how you avoid some of the worst images playing out on tv. do incountry processing of visas so right now people who want to get out, they can't do their paperwork in country and they can't get smuggled out in neighboring countries because the borders are closed. so the united states can exercise muscles and avoid the worst moments. >> the taliban is not interested

in diplomacy as they march across the country. thank you for being here. let's turn to the extreme heat across much of the country this week and the tropical system making its way to florida. bill karins joins us now. good morning. >> good morning, willie. we're almost done with this heat wave but we have one more day out there, it's in the northwest and northeast, yesterday hit 100 degrees again in portland. it was 103. we'll hit 100 again. that's the sixth day this summer hitting 100 plus in portland, oregon. we did hit 100 in dulles, first time since 2019. new york city was 95 yesterday. today we'll do it again. 76 million people under heat warnings or advisories. relief on the way, not today.

104 in d.c. feels like, 104 in new york. all through the southeast included in this. minneapolis and chicago, enjoy it, it's the air that makes its way to the east coast. sunday is going to be a fan tsa day from d.c. to philly to boston, highs upper 70s and low 80s and humidity much lower. as far as fred goes this is expected to be a tropical storm in the next 24 hours, we have warnings for the keys, watch for fort myers and naples. eventually the system gets stronger but right now it is very weak as we go through the weekend. it won't be until sunday, it will get stronger, it has very little wind impact but brings heavy rain to the southeast and chance for flooding as we go sunday night into monday, landfall looks to be sunday evening along panama city area.

not a huge impacting storm but we'll still watch it. >> we'll take that gorgeous air you say is coming our way in the northeast because it is gross right now. still ahead on "morning joe," what former acting attorney general jeffrey rosen reportedly told senators about former president trump's persistent attempts to discredit the 2020 election. conservative attorney george conway will be our guest. with the school year getting under way, hundreds of students are forced to quarantine already over covid concerns in florida. plus the supreme court declines a request by college students to block a coronavirus vaccine mandate. we'll tell you which justice made that decision and what the ruling means for similar cases across the country. also this morning, one of the most decorated female swimmers of all time, katie

ledecky will be our guest. in tokyo she added a pair of gold medals and two silvers to her already impressive collection. katie ledecky and much more when "morning joe" continues right after this. before treating your chronic migraine, 15 or more headache days a month each lasting 4 hours or more, you're not the only one with questions about botox®.

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the president was looking for a green light from an attorney general, bill barr reached a point he couldn't do it anymore, and rosen stepped in and he was not prepared to do it. the president said we'll find another one. think about that for a second. the president is looking for the right person as attorney general who will give him an answer yes. and richard donahue was deputy attorney general he witnessed all of it. >> dick durbin last sunday discussing the search by former president donald trump for anyone in the justice department

who would help him to subvert the results of the 2020 election. "the washington post" is reporting one of the people that trump was counting on was former acting attorney general jeffrey rosen. the post reports rosen told the senate judiciary committee the former president was persistent in trying to pressure the justice department to discredit the election results. rosen's testimony followed the release of handwritten notes from his deputy which had trump saying just tell the people the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me. yesterday politico reported pressure on doj officials, including they look at a viral video of georgia that showed people putting ballots in suitcases needless to say, it showed nothing. and meantime, pj pack resigned

because officials told him he was going to be fired for not saying the election was false. michael, let's start with you. you've been reporting on this story. give us outlines of it and how -- just how bad it's gotten. >>. >> well, look, the story of trump trying to play with his justice department, get his justice department to do what he wanted them to do is as old -- almost as old as the trump administration itself. he tried every turn throughout his presidency, what we see here sort of piling up in this senate investigation, and, you know, also a parallel investigation going on by the inspector general at the justice department are confirmations of a sense, in some of what we know

what was going on at the time in december, in january, earlier this year, like a little more than six months ago. where the president was trying, at any way possible, to overturn this election. and what i found particularly interesting about these recent sort of stories is trump showing like how important and how much he appreciated the fact that if the justice department simply just said that there were problems with the investigation, just simply said something we're not talking about using its criminal or civil power, simply using the bull horn it had as the country's top law enforcement agency to discredit this election, he believed that may have been enough to get him to convince these folks at the state level to do more of what he wanted in throwing out these results. so what we're seeing here is this investigation, particularly on the senate side, moving

forward, getting these witnesses in p front of them, some of them people at the top of the justice department to give an inside sense of what trump was pressuring them and pushing them to do. >> so, george conway, we've grown numb to the scandals, the attacks on our constitutional norms, the attacks on our american democracy from donald trump and those around him. and when the story first broke several weeks ago, it seemed like people's eyes glazed over and kept moving on. could you provide focus for us on just how dangerous this moment was in american history. >> well, this was absolutely one of the most dangerous moments in american history, the most dangerous moments by a president of the united states. i think the reason people's eyes glazed over is the point that mike just made, which is we've seen the movie before in some

way, that president trump would try to coerce federal agencies into doing things that are questionable, benefitting him personally, he even tried to coerce a foreign country to do something to benefit him personally. but this is the most extreme possibility that he would try to use the mechanisms of government, particularly the department of justice, to perpetuate himself in office indefinitely and launch a self-coup, this is a potential, problem, criminal conspiracy. there are a number of provisions that could apply to this conduct. there's conspiracy to defraud the united states, 18 usc section 371, which is what special counsel mueller used to charge the research agency, there's also 18 usc section 1610, which is the most easy in

this situation to apply, which is the criminal provision of the hatch act. what that statute provides is that it shall be unlawful for anybody, that would include the president of the united states, to coerce or attempt to coerce a federal employee into engaging in political activity. and what that would mean is that if donald trump had directed or tried to coerce acting attorney general rosen to walking down pennsylvania avenue with a trump 2020 flag, that would have been criminal. here this was much worse, he was attempting to coerce the department of justice, coerce rosen into engaging in what was a purely political act, precisely because they had told the president there was no interest of the united states in this. that there was no illegality, there was no law enforcement function performed by the justice department and then he -- then donald trump went on to basically say, just say it. just say it. make this statement. that was all, as you point out,

just for political purposes to -- as has been pointed out was for political purposes to influence the political branchs, the congress to overturn the election, and to try to influence what the states were doing. that again, a purely political act, coerced by the president of the united states, who by the way, as these reports made clear, was basically threatening rosen with removal and substitution by jeffrey clark, the guy who was actually trying to -- who was basically, conspireing with the president to overturn the election. that's coercion, fits like a glove. i know there's an inspector general investigation, but they should begin a criminal investigation because there's predication for such an investigation. >> mike schmidt it seems despite the fact we have all grown numb to these stories, it seems every

week there's a new revelation as a way that donald trump tried to use the leverage of the government to keep his hold on power. and certainly, these are stunning ones we've learned about in recent days. but what's next? who else could we hear from? what other steps of the investigation may continue? what other -- you know, whether it's the committee or the ig report that george just said, walk us through where this could go in the weeks ahead. what else could we learn? >> it seems like we're fairly early on in this investigation. they're taking depositions, taking interviews with witnesses. so this would go on for many weeks and months here to come before we would ever see sort of a final report, a final product of what is going to come out of this. i think we have to remember, these are not criminal investigations that are going on. these are investigations that will result in documents that come out or reports that come out that say, look, here's our

understanding of what happened. these types of investigations can make referrals, they can say, hey, we think we found something criminal but there will be no charges that come directly out of any of this. i think that's the most important thing as we were just talking about, is that is there a larger sort of criminal problem here or is this sort of a resuscitation of a story that we know the broad outlines of that we're going to get more details on? that really remains to be seen. the biggest witness i'm most interested in hearing from and seeing whether this witness talks and in what way is the former attorney general, bill barr. bill barr left a little bit more than a month -- a little less than a month before the end of the administration. i think bill barr had a pretty good political sense and a sense of donald trump, and he knew that this was going in a bad direction. at the same time, he was dealing

directly with trump on a lot of these issues between the election and the end of december and he used the powers of the justice department to rundown and to investigate a lot of these claims and he realized that trump was going to be unconvinced no matter what the evidence was. at the same time bill barr was someone that really, you know, he may take issue with this characterization but really enabled the president and was a tool of the president over his time as attorney general, like dating back to the mueller report and how he managed the end of the mueller investigation and throughout barr's tenure was really the attorney general that trump had been looking for on a lot of issues until basically he wasn't until the summer of 2020 when that relationship really starts to fray. so will we hear from bill barr? how will we hear from bill barr?

what does bill barr have to say? >> bill barr famously saying the claims of the election being rigged were, quote, b.s.. michael schmidt thank you very much. i want to get your take, joe on this column in "the washington post," entitled why traditional conservatives should root for biden's success. gerston was a top aide to george w. bush. he writes, many of us not naturally inclined to support a democratic president have developed a rooting interest in joe biden's political success. this is not mainly due to biden's skills or vision. it's because he's fighting a rear guard action to save political rationality. he's one of those beings who calculate what is best for their families and communities. his strategy carries assumption of sanity. biden might have been employed a dynamite to solve a jigsaw puzzle, instead it is republicans who have taken that approach. donald trump did not carefully

organize his troops for battle. he lit them on fire and hoped they would run into enemy lines. the chocolate damage to our society, norms, and institutions means nothing to him. so joe, this is not a broad support of joe biden's policy positions. this is a support by michael gerson anyway of a resetting of political norms in the era of joe biden. >> right. it's interesting. and he was talking about sanity and temperament for the most part. but george conway was having a conversation with fellow conservatives, life-long republicans who left the party since donald trump and we were bemoaning the fact that our choice is between a party that right now is pushing policies that we have, obviously, problems with. whether you're talking about the speedy withdrawal from afghanistan or bernie sanders $3.5 trillion budget bill that's going to be a reconciliation

bill. that's on one side but on the other side for me it's not political niceties, it's actually on the other side you have a party that's against western democracy, if you're talking about donald trump's party that elevates people like orbon, people that praise the end of liberal democracy and brags about being illiberal. that's not a choice at all, is it? we're left with no choice but to be against the party that continues to elevate people like donald trump. >> yeah, absolutely. i agree with that. you know, if the choice is between what i think is excessive deficit spending or a supreme court justice nominee that i don't like and the survival of american democracy, there's no question which side you have to come out on. and what we're seeing today is a continuing threat of -- to

democracy. the way a democracy survives is that people vote and they accept the results and then they work hard, like the devil, to persuade the citizens that they may have voted wrong last time, come with me this time i have arguments about why policy x should be this or policy y should be that. that's the normal democracy, the rationality that the columnist is referring to here that i think joe biden is trying to restore. right now you have some significant percentage of the population who are now completely taken in by this big lie that the election was stolen from them. and if you believe that, then january 6th makes a lot of sense and now trump is praising ashley babbit. it's a terribly, terribly scary thing. >> if it was just donald trump, just a couple political hacks in

washington d.c. that were blindly following him for cynical reasons, that would be one thing. but what we found at the election, there's 75 million americans that think that way and that our former party has been infected. republican congressman dan crenshaw of texas, no left winger, pretty darn conservative guy, he was actually heckled at a fund-raising event in illinois thursday night for saying the 2020 election wasn't rigged. >> don't kid yourself into believing that's why we lost. it's not. >> you're wrong. >> i'll tell you openly. >> you're wrong. >> i'm not wrong. >> i have proof in arizona, pennsylvania, and georgia. >> i know you did the maricopa -- >> yeah. >> how did that turn out. >> it turned out. it's going to flip. >> it won't. and you have to flip all five states. >> you know how they're stealing the elections? >> i'm not going to get into it.

>> george, i have friends that -- very educated friends with advance degrees, lawyers, people who i would have classified as dull republicans before donald trump that will send me emails every day that will say, look at this. and, of course, as i've said on the show before they will be from chinese religious cult websites. and all of these other crazy sources and every day there's a different conspiracy theory. you knock that one down, they go what about that one? it's just how this has happened to our party, to our people is just remarkable to me at least. >> yeah. and that's the worse thing about it now. i mean, you know, the -- i would have thought after donald trump left office in disgrace this would be over but it isn't. and that's the scary part. the even scariest part is that

donald trump could keel over tomorrow, he could go into exile, decide to retire from public life and play golf and never utter another public word again and this disease is still out there. he basically set loose these -- i would call them termites of -- big lie termites that are basically eroding the foundations of american democracy and to get that infestation out of the house is -- it's a tall order and frankly i'm not sure how we're going to do it. >> george conway, always great to have you on the show with us. >> thanks for having me. and happy reinstatement day for all who celebrate. >> oh, is that today? i lost track. >> yeah, i think the pillow guy said it was. >> i didn't know there was another one today. we'll keep an eye on that. coming up on "morning joe," florida governor, ron desantis back pedals a bit on his school

board threats saying education officials should cut their own pay for defying mask mandates. plus a new vaccine mandate to include thousands of hhs secretaries. xavier becerra joins us for a discussion on that topic. >> tech: every customer has their own safelite story. this couple was on a camping trip... ...when their windshield got a chip. they drove to safelite for a same-day repair. and with their insurance, it was no cost to them. >> woman: really? >> tech: that's service you can trust. >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ hey lily, i need a new wireless plan for my business, but all my employees need something different. oh, we can help with that. okay, imagine this... your mover, rob, he's on the scene and needs a plan with a mobile hotspot. we cut to downtown,

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welcome back to "morning joe" just before the top of the hour, beautiful if hot and swampy day in new york city. we begin with our top story, the taliban controlling more than 60% now of afghanistan with many people fleeing to the capital city of kabul. the u.s. state department now ordering americans to evacuate

the country as the pentagon sends troops to help the american embassy there in kabul. >> reporter: a shocking announcement just weeks before the u.s. completes its full withdrawal of troops from afghanistan. >> this is a temporary mission with a narrow focus. >> 3,000 additional personnel will be deployed to kabul airport in the next few days to help evacuate a significant number of embassy staff. taliban fighters are headed into key cities. no one is protecting us. kandahar to the south, herat in the west and ghazni all collapsing. the state department saying all americans need to leave immediately and vowing to increase flights to evacuate many that worked with the

troops. for the thousands of afghan families that can't leave they're seeking refuge in kabul. some saying the taliban is terrorizing villages they captured. they said the taliban violence is increasing, including execution of troops. girls rode bikes, women shopped and ran their businesses in kabul, like this yoga studio. all unthinkable under the taliban. the owner of this studio was 19 when the taliban took over in 1996 her daughter is the same age now. >> would you leave? >> i don't know. let's bring in richard haass. after 9/11 you were the

coordinator for the future of afghanistan. talk about what the future looks like right now? >> it's bleak, joe. tony blinken and others can put out tweets talking about the enduring partnership between the united states and afghanistan. there's no enduring partnership. we ripped it up. we can call on taliban for restraint but there's nothing in its history or dna that suggests there's going to be any restraint there. we made mistakes after 9/11, the last two decades. i think we overreached in afghanistan, trying to make something of it that it wasn't going to be, but we're clearly underreaching now, and the images we're seeing on the screen. this was not inevitable. we reached something of a low cost sustainable equally bri yum. i know it wasn't peace but what

we were getting for what we were doing was preferable to this and what we're seeing. >> you know, richard, we've seen over the past year, the abandonment of our kurdish allies, donald trump was desperate to do that for such a long time in northern iraq and syria. we've seen the abandonment now of our afghanistan allies. people that actually risked their lives, came out of the shadows, women who actually dared to try to live a somewhat dignified life. and the united states is left. what are the ramifications for this country as we move forward in the future for other countries, who we try to -- you know, try to get to come out and take a chance on democracy, freedom or at least take a chance on basic human rights,

take a chance on us that we'll fight and defend them. >> i think what this does is it reinforces the growing narrative that the united states is not a steady, predictable, reliable hand. we saw it with barack obama after the red line fiasco in syria, intervention in libya. many things in the trump administration, where he targeted u.s. allies in all sorts of ways, u.s. troop presence that had been there for decades was a question mark over it. you mentioned the situation in syria, now this. so again, i don't think germans are going to wake up tomorrow and say american troops are going to leave, even though donald trump wanted to, or south koreans but i think it raises questions about reliability. two things will happen. one is our friends begin to hedge because american support is less certain. what worries me also is some of our adversaries may think the united states is not as

dependable, maybe now is the time to press, explore what we can get away with. this is clearly an america that's totally focused domestically and has little interest in maintaining a large world role or even a medium-size world role for much longer. it feeds a narrative and that's what concerns me. one other thing, beyond the humanitarian nightmare, we have pakistan next door, they've provided a sanctuary to the taliban. but what's going to happen now is i think there's a decent chance that the taliban in afghanistan become a sanctuary to undermine pakistan. this doesn't stop here. i think this could become a real destabilizing platform in this part of the world. in pakistan there's dozens of

nuclear weapons. i would say whatever the short term benefits we've done in terms of spending i think they could be dwarfed by the medium and long-term questions of what we set in motion here. >> part of the plan in the last 20 years and what's been happening is the united states is training an afghan military. they have an air force of nearly 200 planes, which raises the question in the last few week, how has the taliban parading across the country in toyota pickup trucks, how is it so quickly overrunning the afghan army that the united states has been training for two decades. >> it's the right question to ask. the taliban is more ethnically unified, a lot of the government numbers aren't real. they're almost fake numbers in who shows up, plus the loyalties are not to the central government. the central government is seen as corrupt, distant.

a lot of loyalties are to this or that ethnic group or tribe. and when things go back they fall back on the associations they feel more confident in. that's exactly what's happening here. so the national mentality has clearly given way to something much more local. we're likely to see the collapse of a central authority and a return to the afghanistan that is dominated by the taliban but not 100% controlled by it and we see all sorts of pockets of fighting between this and that tribal groups, particularly those in the north and the taliban. >> you just briefly touched on pakistan i was hoping you should flesh that out, in terms of what you think could happen with them and what role they're playing. but also the neighbor to the west, iran, how you see them reacting to what is happening there and how they perhaps could use it to their advantage in their already contentious

relationship with the u.s. in the west. >> there's six countries that directly border on afghanistan. i don't think any of them is going to be particularly happy. it's not simply the refugee flows. 20 years ago when we tried to put together a government successfully in afghanistan after booting out the taliban, iran was helpful. the reason was iranians wanted stability there. why? millions of iranians were getting hooked on drugs coming out of afghanistan. others were worried about terrorism. so i don't think anyone is wild about it. the chinese will try to create a barrier so nothing can come out of afghanistan, be it terrorists or drugs that could get into china. but most of the neighbors see this more as a problem and a threat or a risk rather than an area for great advantage. the one possible exception might be pakistan which has seen

afghanistan as something of a location of what you might call strategic depths. even the pakistanis may come to rue the day. they've created in many ways this large taliban movement, they have to be careful now it doesn't come back to undermine tank itself. pakistan itself. >> richard before we let you go, as a public service announcement to future political leaders, can we again obliterate this idea that afghanistan was a, quote, forever war when we didn't have 150,000 troops there, we had 3,500, 4,000. just like we did in syria when donald trump wanted to get that force-out of there. and can you explain, because

we're going to be talking about the 20 year anniversary of 9/11 and what we learned, the mistakes we've made, can you explain how the united states military has gotten to a point we can have these smaller footprints of 3,000, 4,000 elite troops that can do extraordinary things, hold a country together with a minimum of cost and a minimum of casualties? >> joe, you've put it exactly right. i have a short list of phrases i hate. and when of these is these forever wars. what this was was an open-ended presence. we -- it took us a long time to get it right. i think, again, we aimed too high in afghanistan for a while, just like iraq now in iraq we have settled on a situation where a few thousand american troops working with the government can provide something of a foundation. i believe we've come close to

that in afghanistan. there hasn't been an american combat death there for 18 months. we need to keep this in perspective. yes, there's an open-ended war in afghanistan but the united states had pretty much taken a step back from it and established a presence. i think where the benefits and the gains outweighed the direct and indirect costs of it. and we have to be careful not to learn the wrong lessons. yes, we overreached in afghanistan and iraq i get it. but history shows that underreached creates doubts about your credibility. we're the cat that got on the stove once, now we're running away from it completely. but i think at this phase of history we may be entering the danger is the united states does too little and the world won't organize itself.

think about it. you spend time on the show talking about the pandemic, climate change, what do these things have in common? every one of the things has in common what happens there doesn't stay there. it gets on a conveyer belt and comes here. we have to find ways to stay involved in the world or the world will hurt us at home. the lesson can't be isolation. it has to be discriminate involvement in the world. >> 3,000 american troops are headed back to the afghanistan temporarily to help with the evacuation of the embassy in kabul. richard, thanks so much we'll see you again soon. now to the latest developments with the coronavirus. morgan chesky has more on the increase of cases, hospitalizations and deaths, especially in regions of the

country with low vaccination rates. >> reporter: hospitals running low on rooms, staff and hope. florida and texas accounting for 40% of new hospitalizations nationwide. >> very tired. >> reporter: federal officials announcing the next step includes booster shots for the immunocompromised. >> it could help increase protections for individuals which is important as the delta variant spreads. >> reporter: the fda now recommending another shot of pfizer or moderna for the most vulnerable, such as cancer patients and transplant recipients. with 90% of u.s. counties now experiencing high or substantial transmission rates, many hospitals at a breaking point. >> no longer a ppe crisis. it's a care giver crisis.

>> reporter: florida has seen more cases in the last week than 30 states combined. in dallas, dr. joseph chang says he's short 500 nurses. >> you have a depleted staff and covid numbers only going up. where does that put you? >> puts me in a bad spot. >> reporter: he said parkland's maternity ward is now doing the unthinkable. >> i had to make the decision two weeks ago to transfer pregnant patients away to have to make that decision, to not take transfers because i'm so fuel of volume, it's gut wrenching. >> in mississippi thousands of children, educators and school staff now are under quarantine because they may have been exposed to covid-19. 69 outbreaks were reported in the state during the second week of school there, resulting in nearly 4,400 school children placed under quarantine.

the health department also noted it has received data from only 43 of the state's 82 counties, suggesting more children may have been exposed. while many mississippi school districts did adopt a mask mandate at least for the beginning of the school year, there's no statewide order for schools. mississippi has one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country. a similar situation in florida where nearly 500 students in many palm beach county have been kwarn guaranteed from covid-19 just two days into the school year. the school district, the 10th largest in the country now requires face masks for all students and staff members. around 5,700 students have opted out per an order from governor ron desantis. our affiliate nbc 6 in miami is reporting three teachers and a teachers assistant in broward

county have died from covid just this week. all four were on summer break when they contracted the virus. the teachers' union president telling nbc 6 there is another teacher's assistant currently in the hospital battling covid. just the week the school board voted to require masks in if schools, defying the governor's ban on mask mandate. joining us is dr. aileen marty and dr. dave campbell. good morning to you both. dr. marty, let me begin with you and the state of affairs in florida. what does it look like there from your point of view inside the hospitals? >> it's heart wrenching. we have just way too many patients to give quality care right now. >> and what about mask mandates? what's your view on that, dr. marty? do you believe that schools,

based on what we've seen and heard, do you think they ought to have the ability at least, despite what governor desantis has said, to ask their students and mandate that their students wear masks? >> the science is very clear. masks help reduce transmission. there's no question about it. and when we have these high viral loads, it is only appropriate that people be using as many layers of protection as possible. we're going to be opening up schools where we're going to have people up close and personal with one another for long hours in rooms. we need to increase the safety of those spaces so children can stay in schools and the teachers can be safe and the other employees can be safe as well. that really has to be taken into consideration. we have to understand that our

rights as parents are always limited by certain choices. we can't leave a child alone in a hot car, we can't put them in a car without appropriate car seats. there's many things we have restrictions on our parental right when it affects the child and particularly when it affects the health of the community. it's important to realize there's laws that we have had say we cannot do actions that hurt those around us and we have to take that into consideration when we decide what we're doing in our schools. >> dr. dave you've been reporting from florida, on the ground, since the covid crisis began early last year. let's talk about where we are right now in florida. we just had an nbc report that said florida had more covid cases than 30 other states combined. florida and texas together

account for 40% of all new covid cases. the situation in the hospitals there, the emergency rooms there, what about elective surgery? i know you do spine work for people often in excruciating pain. are you still able to conduct those surgeries? are we going -- are we coming to a time where elective surgeries may be forced to end once again in florida? >> it already happened. in palm beach county we see this rolling wave of hospitals stopping elective surgery. that wave hit miami-dade, orlando county. yesterday we found out the hospital i perform surgery in will be stopping elective surgery. that starts this coming monday. today is friday. that's a bell weather of the significance that we're seeing in the emergency rooms and in the hospitals and in the icus.

the hospitals are nearly full or full. the icus are nearly full or full. one infectious disease doctor, dr. diaz, probably the busiest that i know and have reported on, she has 120 patients -- in-patients right now between two hospitals in northern palm beach county. she describes the emergency departments a z a war zone and could never imagine it could be this bad. she equates it to the aids epidemic where she worked very, very diligently and this is worse. >> dr. dave, of course, the overwhelming majority of those people -- some of the numbers i've heard actually across florida, many of those emergency rooms and icu beds, even 100%, 99%, 100% of the people filling those beds unvaccinated. first of all. secondly, i've heard stories,

also, where people that thought they were having heart attacks were not able to get in hospitals and had to stand in line because there was so much chaos getting into emergency rooms that somebody who thought they were suffering a heart attack wasn't able to get in there for several hours because it was just mass chaos in these emergency rooms. >> joe, you heard right. describing it as a war zone seems like an exaggeration, but it's not. that's here in northern palm beach county, it is like that in the rest of the state, in the rest of the counties. heart attack, strokes, any problem is now marginalized because of the urgency of patients coming into the hospital with severe covid illness, respiratory problems,

perhaps needing ventilation and oxygen. and oxygen is in low supply, joe. so what you're hearing is what's happening across the state right now in florida. >> dave, when somebody says, oh, if i don't get a vaccine, it's not going to hurt anybody but me. sounds like it's hurting people suffering from heart attack, stroke, other -- let's say car accidents even that gets complicated. a lot of people are being hurt. a lot of hospitals are being jam packed by those very people who are unvaccinated, is that correct? >> that is correct. this is a disease of the unvaccinated, largely. if we take that thought and put it to a small subset of pregnant women and look at the number that have been vaccinated, 23%

of pregnant women in the u.s. have had only one dose. the cdc this week came out strongly recommending that pregnant women and breast-feeding women get vaccinated. that brings the cdc in line now, based on the science -- the new science that's coming out, in line with the ob-gyn groups who have been recommending that pregnant women get vaccinated. so that was really the last -- the group of people who didn't quite know what to do and now they do. now all experts in all specialties across the country are recommending that all that can get vaccinated do. >> doctors thanks for being with us this morning. we appreciate it. staying in florida, the governor there, ron desantis, is walking back a bit, his administration's threat to withhold pay for education officials who defy his order that school districts cannot

mandate masks. according to the miami herald, the governor's office is now acknowledging the state has no control over the pay of local employees. in an email to the herald a spokesperson for desantis called on quote activist anti-science school board members, their words, to dock their own salaries if the state follows through with sanctions. the herald notes, the education commissioner warns school districts he may recommend the state board of education withhold funds in an amount equal to the salaries of the superintendent and all the members of the school board. officials in if houston are defying the ban on mask mandates put in place by greg abbott. harris county warned masks must be worn in school and child care facilities. the state's four largest

counties now require masks in schools. other districts across texas are suing the governor over his executive order, banning the masks. and louisiana state university's presence has announced his school likely will require students and faculty to be vaccinated against covid-19 once the fda fully authorizes one or more of the vaccines. a statement reads in part we expect the fda to fully authorize one or more of the covid vaccines in the next few weeks, at which point we will act swiftly to mandate it at lsu. joe, that's a big step from lsu, a deep red state with a low vaccination rate, to have the biggest university come out and say once we have fda clearance you have to have the vaccine to come to our school. it's a big step. >> it makes sense.

we're talking about masks, there is science despite what ron desantis' spokesperson says. the point is vaccination, you have to get the vaccinations up. the fda is working hard to approve the vaccinations, full authorization. they need to do that. but again it's so interesting, though, willie, yesterday there was a lot of talk, a lot of chatter after amy coney berit said the court was not going to look at an injunction filed by indiana university students there suggesting this violates their constitutional rights. it's as if none of these people went kindergarten, first grade through 12th grade, anybody that was there at indiana university that has a vaccine mandate, none of them have ever been in public

schools or private schools most likely that didn't have vaccine mandates for four, five, six vaccines throughout their entire life. so to pretend that everything is brand new since donald trump was elected president of the united states, is ridiculous. this is this is really consistent and in line with what we've been doing in this country for well over half a century. >> and justice barrett, didn't have to think long and hard about that. she said immediately, no. indiana university can have a vaccine mandate. there are plenty of exceptions, if you want an out for religious reasons and others, there are ways out of it. you have to submit to masking and testing to go to indiana university. but the supreme court has spoken on the mandates. still ahead the budget blueprint passed by democrats

facing a roadblock in the house from democrats. we'll get to that reporting out of "the new york times." plus gene robinson joins us on his new article maybe it's time for doubting democrats to press pause on the angst. gene will explain what he means there. angst gene will explain what he means there. d a mystery. everything felt like a “no.” but then paul went from no to know. with freestyle libre 14 day, now he knows how food affects his glucose. and he knows when to make different choices. take the mystery out of your glucose levels - and lower your a1c. now you know. try it for free. visit freestylelibre.us ♪♪ discover card i just got my cashback match is this for real? yup! we match all the cash back new card members earn at the end of their first year automatically woo! i got my mo-ney! it's hard to contain yourself isn't it? uh- huh! well let it go! woooo!

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let's bring in john heileman right now. john, i got in trouble yesterday. i got in the middle of a fight between two brothers, worse than getting in between the barnacle boys when they had a fight. a couple days ago i talked about responding to -- i think it was charlie pierce who had the top five -- not my top five favorite bands of all time but sort of the five sort of rock gods. who are in the pantheon from the

1960s, the '64 to the '70s. i put the kinks at number four and saying they deserve to be there but for no other reason than creating this sound when they were jamming knitting needles into their speakers. a story ray davies has told time and time ago. somebody took offense. >> hi, everybody. hi, joe. i want to say again that the guitar sound on an lp cut amplifier by slashing the speaker with a razor blade, that's what gave the guitar that sound. there was no pins, no needles, in fact, no people except me. so thank you very much, god

bless you. have a lovely day. >> so anyway, dave davies clarifying it again, not knitting needles in the speaker as ray his brother has said for years. but, in fact, it was dave that took razor blades to the speaker and gave us that extraordinary sound. >> you walked into a cane and able situation, joe. i saw it on tv. i did not envy you for having gotten between those two. they have a lot of fights between those two davies brothers but that's just one of them. you walked into it there, buddy. >> i did. we should do a segment sometime on top five bands and expand it out from there and hopefully won't start any fights between brothers or siblings or family members in the future. i'm curious what your thoughts are really quickly on what's

happening in florida and in texas. we have two popularpopular, conservative, they would call themselves conservatives, i wouldn't, governors in those states. they're both getting run over right now by school boards, my local officials, by principals regarding these mask mandates that nobody is listening to anymore and you had ron desantis backing down yesterday. what's your take? >> you know, joe we talked about this, i think a couple days ago. and you were proposing the notion that maybe ron desantis was finally going too far and he was -- you know, the death toll, the emergency room toll, the revival of covid in florida the way it is right now was testing the blind loyalty of a lot of floridans to ron desantis and he was going too far.

i sort of countered you and said i don't know, they seem to love ron desantis down there. but i think you've seen his administration walking away from the more extreme versions of their policies and creating loopholes or trying to save face since we had that conversation. that was probably wednesday, right, we talked. for the last 48 hours they've been backing down. those two governors both, you know, have -- are both very trump-y governors, but -- they are trump-y, but they are not trump. and i think it may be in both of these cases where there was so much optimism about where we were going in terms of the pandemic this summer to turn the corner and go backwards as dramatically as we have right now i think it may be so stark and dramatic that it is testing the normal kind of ideological elasticity, right.

and you're seeing a kind of backlash that neither one of those governors has been familiar with so far just because the circumstances in the state are so dire. >> the mayors and school boards ignoring the governors for the health of their children in the district. we have coronavirus, afghanistan and back in washington new developments. "the new york times" reporting this morning nine moderate house democrats plan to tell speaker nancy pelosi they will not consider the $3.5 trillion budget resolution passed by the senate this week until the bipartisan infrastructure bill is signed into law. the time reports, quote, the pledge is a major rift that threatens the carefully choreographed, two-track effort by congressional democrats and the biden administration to enact both a trillion dollar bipartisan infrastructure deal and a more ambitious social

policy. the nine members are more than enough to block consideration of the budget blueprint in a house where democrats have a three seat majority. how does nancy pelosi, president biden, how do they navigate the lanes of the party they're dealing with, which is to say keeping progressives happy with the $3.5 trillion budget but keeping moderates on board. >> don't ever bet on house speaker nancy pelosi, in terms of getting it done. but the situation like this is one of the scenarios that concerned congressional leadership and the white house as they try to have this delicate balancing act to keep their party in line. as i wrote earlier this week, the president should be touted for the accomplish he achieved bringing together the bipartisan piece through the senate. now the hard part begins. not only do you need that piece throughout house where you have

a wide variety of ideologies in the democratic party, you have the centrists we saw one retire in many wisconsin after 20 years, to the progressives, those that are on the left of the party, the aocs and others. there has been throughout the idea that the two pieces of legislation had to go at once. the infrastructure bill, the bipartisan vehicle is one for the moderates to stake claim to, going back to their voters saying this is what we achieve. while the far bigger reconciliation piece is for the progressives and brings forth the rest of the biden agenda if even if it's smaller than 3.5 trillion. we're hearing from the moderates today throws a wrench in the plans. over the next few weeks, congress on recess, president in delaware for the mini vacation.

this is the sequence they have to figure out in the next few weeks. >> eugene robinson, you have a new article in "the washington post" writing, it's time to entertain the poenlt that president biden, senate majority leader chuck schumer and house speaker nancy pelosi actually know what they're doing and are good at their jobs. democrats have doubts because they always have doubts. dwelling on worse case scenarios is wired into the dna. this angst is richly nourished by voluminous news media analysis and considering what could go wrong. 19 republicans, including mitch mcconnell joined every senate democrat in approving $1 trillion worth of desperately needed infrastructure spending, and the whole senate democratic

caucus greed on a budget framework. democrats give yourself a few days to admire all that is being accomplished for a change, yes, take yes for an answer. there may be more doubt now that we're hearing from the nine democrats saying we want the infrastructure package to pass through the house before we look at this massive budget but there will always be hand wringing as you write. >> yes. i mention this possibility in the column and i go back to jonathan lemire's words. i wouldn't bet too much money against nancy pelosi, who has demonstrated over the years that she's pretty good at counting votes, at getting votes, and the way she does it is by dealing very directly and pretty well with all the various caucuses in

the democratic -- democratic -- the large democratic caucus in the house. so she meets with the moderates, the progressives, the black caucus, she's good at herding these cats. yes, there's no guarantee and it could fall apart but this was never supposed to get this far. we were never supposed to get these two massive pieces of legislation to this point. there were never going to be any republican support for infrastructure or anything that biden was trying to do. you were never going to hold all the senate democrats together to vote for the budget resolution. and these two things were never going to happen at the same time out of this senate. yet all that happened and that's the work of biden and schumer and pelosi because it's the house that was demanding it all

happen at the same time. so i think -- i think they do know how to do this and they've shown they're quite good at it. so i'm not writing off this deal because of the this new threat from the moderates. i anticipate there'll probably be threats from the progressives as well. but let's see how it works out. because, again, pelosi usually finds a way to get the votes. >> regardless of where the threats come from, let's look at the situation right now, john heileman. after six months, seven months, eight months of so many people telling joe biden to ignore the republicans, you're never going to get a deal with republicans, stop talking about bipartisan, it will never happen, basically saying you're a fool, you're being suck erred into this, it's lucy with the football. we find ourselves now in a position where joe biden has

gotten the most significant bipartisan bill passed through the united states congress i don't know in how long, 10, 11, 12 years, hard to say. but this is where the democrats find themselves at right now. i'm not saying it's easy. but this is the extraordinary position that joe biden's party finds itself in right now. to pass $4.5 trillion of hard infrastructure and human infrastructure, to recognize biden's extraordinarily sweeping vision for his presidency over the next few years that he laid out in april. the democratic party doesn't need a single republican vote. they hold the future in their hands. there's, of course, a danger, democrats will control the house over the next several years on how well moderates do in their districts. but that aside, if you want to

look at where they are right now, chuck schumer, nancy pelosi, and joe biden, don't need another republican vote to pass that trillion dollar infrastructure bill and the $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill. that's pretty extraordinary, if you think about where they've been over the past six months. >> yeah, i mean, look, there's no question that the degree to which -- as gene said and you said, what joe biden and nancy pelosi and chuck schumer, you can't stress enough how much coordination is going on between the white house and the leadership in the senate and the house. they've come much further than doubting thomases thought they could get. and you're right, it's all in the hands of the democrats. not being a doubting thomas, not thinking it couldn't happen, i said this is going to be tricky.

and the moderates in the house woke up over the last couple days and realized we have as much political leverage as progressives do. they've said all along if we don't get the larger reconciliation bill passed on the senate side we're not going to vote on this bipartisan infrastructure bill that threat has been out there for months. now moderates are making the same threat, no, wait, we're going to pull our votes out of the reconciliation thing if you don't pass the infrastructure bill first. i think they're at logger heads and at a stalemate and the question, i think, yes, no one should in any way doubt that nancy pelosi's legislative moxey and her ability to pull things off. the question in the end, joe, to your point is whether nancy pelosi is going to be able to look at all factions of the

party, you all think you have leverage but in the end you have the ability the sink joe biden's legislative agenda. do you want to be blamed for capsizing this presidency, this ambitious agenda? if she can make them see that they don't want to take that fault, she'll be able the question. can they all see that sucking it up and doing this for the greater good of the party and for joe biden is in their best interest after they extracted every ounce of flesh on the table they can through their various threats. >> john, let's end where we began. i talked about the rock god list of the 1960s. too stevie van zandt started on twitter and other people jumped in. this isn't the list of the greatest bands of all time or most influential acts certainly

the beach boys, buddy holly, the sex pistols, buddy costello would be on my list. but i had the beatles one, rolling stones two, the who three, kinks four, and ccr five. what's your top five rock gods of the '60s look like? >> if you have to do the '60s and it's just rock gods, right? so you have to have the beatles, stones, who, and the kinks in there. i think there's one for one, you've got credence in there. you could argue for creem i guess as the fifth. i probably would make that case. but i liked your top four, i think that's clear. if it's rock gods of the '60s. >> right. that's all it is. we'll expand this out. willie, of course, i know you disagree with me about number

one. you are a stones man through and through. but heileman thank you for being with us. we will talk soon. coming up we have xavier becerra coming up. before we go to break, willie, my kids and i, we -- we're making the ginger snaps, making some russian tea, we do it every sunday morning because we, of course, before we go to church we get all dressed up, and we have those ginger snaps and we watch willie's sunday today. what are we going to see this sunday? >> i know young jack when the clock strikes 8:00 a.m. in your

house, he goes shh, papa willie is on. it's a beautiful sight with the ginger snaps and tea. this sunday, the great jane krakowski, she does it all, she's charming and has an incredible career. she was cousin vicky in "vacation". she was on "ally mcbeal". a great greats. jane krakowski this weekend on nbc, sunday today. we'll be right back on "morning joe." ♪♪ so then i said to him, you oughta customize your car insurance with liberty mutual,

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welcome back to "morning joe." 7:49 at the united states capitol here on the east coast. one by one federal agencies are mandating vaccines. the pentagon is agencies are image dating vaccines for all department of employees. on wednesday the veteran's affairs department extended its vaccines to cover a wider range of volunteers at va health facilities. notice the department of health and human services is mandating its 25,000 healthcare workers get a vaccine. joining us xavier becerra. thank you for being with us. explain the decision to put in place this mandate. >> pretty simple. we all have to take personal responsible for ourselves and for those we love. it's time that we do what we know is safe, protect everyone we can and so at hhs, where our

job is health, we want to make sure we're doing our part. most of the people at hhs have been vaccinated. some of our folks actually provide direct line healthcare and so we want to make sure everyone who provides direct line healthcare is vaccine nalted to protect themselves, their co-workers and, of course, the people they treat. >> we've seen pushback in places across the country on vaccine mandates, what's been the reception inside your agency over this one? >> very receptive. because as i said, most of the folks have already been vaccinated. so we're not getting the kind of pushback you might see in other quarters. i think people here understand our job is healthcare. it's doing it right, doing it safely, protecting others. >> good morning, jonathan lemire, i was hoping to get you when you talk about vaccines for hhs, if you can weigh in on what we are seeing fierce debates in florida and texas where our

local school boards are wanting to have masks the state government is saying, no, we can't do that. there is a lot of debate in new york city, san francisco, other places are requiring vaccines for employees, teachers, so on. other places very much not doing that. what sort of role can your agency play in this debate and what do you think should be happening? how concerned are you seeing things play out in places like florida? >> well, the places that are resisting are the places on fire with covid infection. unfortunately, the people in those jurisdictions are suffering the most. certainly, it will be beyond their borders, it's impacting communities that have done a better job of vaccinating. but there is no doubt when we don't take on that personal responsibility to care for ourselves and for others, others pay the price and so we're doing what we can to help. we recently sent some, several hundred ventilators to florida because of the high rates of

contagion in florida. we continue to be in texas. we're going to help everywhere we request. -- can. we hope people will help themselves. >> hhs is a health action. how close are we to getting full approval for these vaccines? so much seems to be riding on it right now? >> we are getting closer. what i will tell you is since last night the fda said that we should extend a booster shot to those who have compromised immunity systems. you can see how they're slowly gathering the science to give us the information we need to say how we can use those vaccines they're working really hard to make sure based on the science and the facts that they can say that we can extend the vaccine to those that are under 12, to those who are immunocompromised, getting a third shot. they're doing everything, they're basing it on science and the facts. >> can we inspect a full approval of these vaccines in

the next week or two? >> i think it's coming, but i say that only because clearly all the signs and the evidence show that we're getting there. but again, i will leave that to fda. we'll leave that to the science to give us the actual answer. how quickly? i think all of us agree the sooner the better. but again, we want to base it on science, not on the fact that there are communities that are still raging with covid. mostly because they're not vaccinating sufficiently. >> well, let's talk about lower prescription drug costs. it seems that everybody that runs for president talks about it. we have donald trump talking about it for four years. other presidential candidates have talked about it in the past. nothing seemed to happen. it looks like we might finally getting progress in the biden administration. how can we get prescription drug prices down? >> well, i think it's great to see a president who actually walks his talk, right? in here, president biden made it very clear, we're going to lower

the cost of prescription medicine. there is no reason americans pay two or three times as much for drugs that are manufactured in the u.s. as do people in other countries. and so we're going to go and do something the old fashioned way. an american tradition. negotiate to get a better price. just the way when you go to a car dealership to buy a car. when you go to that flea market, you try to get a better price for that profit. which should be able to do the same thing when it comes to prescription drugs for seniors under mid medicare. generally speaking, we drop down to prescription medication. congress looks like it's on the way to making that happen. we applaud them. we will do everything at hhs to support their efforts. >> that's great news. it is about time. so congratulations on that progress. let's also talk about one more thing that we actually didn't see a lot of over past four years during the trump administration. that was a focus on helping people get into the affordable care act, enroll in the

affordable care act if they needed to or their families need to. there will be a special healthcare enrollment for healthcare. there is a deadline that's coming up and what is that? >> joe, it's sunday and if you are all superstitious today on friday the 13th, i suggest you get up, the first thing you do is go on to healthcare.gov, sign up for healthcare under the affordable care act. you will save yourself a treacherous friday the 13th and you will beat the deadline of sunday the 15th. you will join 2.5 million american who's have just this year joined up on the aca. there are more people on the affordable care act's marketplace getting their insurance than ever before. so what we will do is we will be healthier and safer as a result. sign up. >> all right. secretary of health and human services, xavier becerra, thank you for your time. we appreciate it. still ahead on "morning joe", the taliban is making

sweeping advances across afghanistan, taking another city even as we have been on the air here. this morning, only a handful or major cities remain under government control. we will have the latest on the instability to say the least, in that region. "morning joe" is coming right back. oh! are you using liberty mutual's coverage customizer tool? so you only pay for what you need. sorry? limu, you're an animal!

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. hey, welcome back to "morning joe." it's 8:00 a.m. on east coast. 5:00 a.m. on the west. what is happening with afghanistan? >> just this morning the associated press reports the group captured another two provincetial capitals. they overtook the key city of kandahar, that is the second largest city in the country as well as the smallest country herat. some of them even changing sides to fight with the taliban. residents are fleeing now to kabul. one of the last cities spared from violence. but some u.s. officials say even the afghan capital soon may be threatened and fear the afghan government pay completely collapse within 30 days. the biden administration is

rushing 3,000 troops to the kabul airport to help with a partial evacuation of the u.s. embassy. the move is described by the a.p. as a sign of waning confidence to hold off the taliban surge. this as three american officials tell the "new york times", american negotiators are trying to extract assurances from the taliban. they will not attack the u.s. embassy in kabul if the extremist group takes over the government and ever wants to receive foreign aide. despite the accelerated exit, state department spokesman ned price insisted yesterday the united states has not given up on the afghan people. >> well, the message we are sending to the people of afghanistan is one of enduring partnership. this is not abandonment. this is not an evacuation. this is not the wholesale whitehall. what this is, is a reduction in

the size of your civilian foot print. >> let's bring in former nato supreme allied xander four star admiral, a diplomacy analyst for nbc news and msnbd anded a jupth senior fellow on foreign relations, a best selling author who reported extensively on afghanistan and chief white house correspondent for the "new york times", peter baker. good morning to you all. admiral, let me start with you. we said this was perhaps not surprising except for the pace. what do you make of what is happening as we speak in afghanistan? >> yeah, that's a good summary. especially on friday the 13th. it is a bad day for the government if kabul. you know staying with the baseball theme, it kind of feels like the 9th inning. kandahar is like los angeles falling out in herat, that's chicago, a few days ago kafduz.

these are big population centres. so i think you categorized it right, willie, which is to say many of us were predicting this would happen but the speed of it is quite remarkable. you have to ask yourself why? why this collapse? considering we had trained the afghans? we had supplied them with superb equipment. they really had the tools to defend and they might still be able to put a hardened perimeter around kabul. but, boy, even that looks doubtful. i think the deployment of the u.s. troops is a good move. what we want to avoid at this point is a complete collapse and a saigon moment. i think we can still avoid that, moving the troops didn't make sense to me. this administration appears quite clear, they will cut the cord and get out. so we got to be thinking about follow-on steps in an event that

ensures american citizens, our allies, those who work alongside of us, the interpreters, for example, can get out as well, a very dark moment. >> now, the american people, admiral, support this move. and, yet, i am still surprised at our rapid removal and ned price at the statement department said, this wasn't abandonment. this wasn't evacuation. it's exactly what it is. i just wonder, admiral, how the united states of america maintained security not just for everybody else's interest, but for our own selfish self interest, if we can't keep 2500, 3,000, 4,000 troops in a country like afghanistan and a country like syria and in oats hot spots where we've now figured out over 20 years. and everybody will be talking

about what have we learned over past 20 years? we figure out to have a really small foot print in places like syria and afghanistan and at the same time stop the russians, stop the syrians, stop the iranians, stop isis, stop the turks, stop everybody from advancing. what do you think about a country, politicians that aren't willing to actually put 3,000, 3500 troops 4,000 troops in hot spots. when most of the troops want to be there and are upset when they're withdrawn? >> the way to think about this, joe, is leverage. in other words what can you gain with relatively small foot print. relatively low costs in a very strategic place? i mean, look at a map. afghanistan is parked in the middle of russia, china, pakistan, india. it's sitting on top of a trillion dollars in rare earths in lithium, which goes in every car battery ever made. there is a lot of reason to want

to keep stability in afghanistan. by the way, starting with the fact that when it's ungoverned, it becomes a launchpad for things like 9/11. so doing it with 150,000 troops, when i commanded that economy, it had 150,000 troops, that's not cost effective. but doing it with 3500 to 5,000 troops mikes a lot of sense to me so i agree with your premise. we are failing in keeping the leverage here. at this point there is really no way back that i can see or the administration. >> we are already hearing horror stories of what the taliban is doing to women and girls who had in some respects been protected but allowed to step out in society in the last 20 years or so what are you hearing on that angle as united states of america pleased with the taliban to not attack its embassy in kabul?

>> i mean the taliban is not just at the door. they're in the house. and the question is, how do you have enough space and time to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe play out before our cameras and world? i mean, you have a situation now, by phone, by whatsapp on e-mail yesterday was filled with young women who months before were high school students dreaming of becoming doctors and teachers. now they have very real fears of becoming taliban brides. so i think the question is, how do we avoid worst case scenarios and create space so that some of the worst case scenarios that have not yet played out can happen? you know the two years went by in 1994 to 1996 when kandahar fell and taliban took kabul. there were three years. i don't think anyone expects that now. i was talking to a young woman yesterday who was trying to figure out what she does with her family. she's on activist. she's spoken out for women and

girl's participation in the political process. she does not know what her mom and dad are going to do. another young person reached out to me and said, you know, i taught myself coding. i am ready to study robotics. i am ready to study engineer, but i had to flee because i was getting taliban threats. but my mom and dad are still there, can you help ne a u.s. special operations veteran wrote me and said, i got my interpreter out, but his wife is there or his family is there because he had come out several years earlier. so all of this is playing out in very real time and the stakes are high. one young woman i talked to, she studied at that basically s.a.t. prep center, that was bombed by most likely by isis. and she went on to be the top scorer for the college entrance exams out of 170,000 students. she dreamed of becoming an insurgent. now she is trying to figure out

how she gets through tomorrow. i think those are the very real stakes. >> yes. peter baker, we did know this was going to happen. we also knew when we withdrew our troops that it was going to young girls, it was going to be women. the very young girls, the very women, the very people who over the past 20 years, we had insured them that they can go to school, they can get a job. they can start their own businesses. and we would protect them. ned price of the state department talked about how the i think so white house fought abandoning afghanistan. well, we are. this is an abandonment. this is an abandonment that they opposed and told the president

he shouldn't do it. the joint chiefs and admiral stavride, most knew this was a bad move and this was going to happen and we were going to see these stories every day for possibly years. and yet joe biden decided to move forward with this. again, wanting to do what donald trump had wanted to do over the past several years. the question is, what was in joe biden's background? i know going back to 2009, he had contempt for afghanistan leadership. but what was in his background that had him move forward and dam all the torpedos despite what he had to know what was going to happen? >> yeah, it's a remarkable situation. you know, joe, i was there on the ground 20 years ago this fall.

just days of 9/11 before the cia showed up, as a reporter, covering afghanistan. i saw what it was like when the taliban was in charge. the idea that we would be here 20 years later, almost 20 years to the day from 9/11, seeing the country turn back to where it was. in some ways, anyway, is a remarkably dark moment to use most of stavrides phrase. i know bind certainly had every reason to know this was going to happen. nobody should be surprised by any of this. it's striking but not surprising, because you know, everybody said, this is exactly what happened. the pentagon told the white house this is what was going to happen. we've seen this movie before. and what you hear when you talk in private with the biden administration folks is a very cold calculation, which is, yeah, this is going to happen. we have given it 20 years. it's up to the afghans to take

care of their country. we're done, we're washing our hands is what they're saying. we will make the best in the next two months in making terms our own people are safe. there is some commitment, anyway, helping some afghans who helped us over the years. it's a pretty cold calculation. you don't hear empathy from either joe biden or the administration for the people of afghanistan who will you suffer as a result. people gayle has been in touch with and others, you are hearing stories of atrocities and the kinds of things we saw in the '90s when the taliban had briefly control of the country, the pictures and the stories that will emanate in the weeks and months to come, you know, will be a humanitarian crisis in the making. but the calculation is what you said, joe, the american people are tired of it. they don't want to be there anymore. they don't think we have to be there anymore. it's not our country. it's up to the afghans to take care of themselves.

we do what we could, so it's time to get out. >> peter baker, admiral james stavrides, gail, thank you all. more on the effort to overturn the 2020 election. how the justice department reacted to a pressure campaign from the white house aimed as discrediting the vote. that 74 is next on "morning joe." diting the vote. that 74 is next on "morning joe. as your business changes, the united states postal service is changing with it. with e-commerce that runs at the speed of now. next day and two-day shipping nationwide, and returns right from the doorstep. it's a whole new world out there. let's not keep it waiting. [engine revs] ricky bobby, today the road is your classroom. [zippers fasten]

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

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the president was looking for a green light from an attorney general. bill barr couldn't do it anymore and rosen stepped in. the president said, we'll find another one. think about that for a second in the president is looking for the right person as attorney general who will give him annens answer of yes. the deputy attorney general witnessed all of this. >> senate judiciary committee dick durbin last sunday describing the search for former

president trump for anyone in the justice department to help him subvert the 2020 election. the washington post is reporting one of the people he was counting on was acting attorney general jeffrey rosen. you heard him refer to there. the post reports rosen told the senate judiciary committee the former president was persistent in discrediting the election results. it followed handwritten notes from his deputy, richard donahue, which describe trump say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me. yesterday politico reported pressure on doj officials included a viral video from georgia that purported to show ballots put into suitcases. that showed nothing of the south. he said he resigned because doj officials told him trump was about to fire him for refusing

to say evidence of widespread voter fraud had been found in georgia. joe. >> joining us now as we get the "new york times" report and national security analyst michael schmidt. also attorney george conway, michael, let's start with you. you have been reporting on this story. give us outlines of it and just how bad it's gotten? well, look, the story of trump trying to play with his justice department and get his justice department to do what he wanted him to do is almost as old as the trump administration itself. he tried every turn throughout his presidency. what we see here sort of piling up in this senate investigation and also there is a parallel investigation going on by the inspector general at the justice department, our confirmations

are a sense and some of what we knew what was going on at the time. in december, in january, earlier this year, you know, a little more than six months ago, where the president was trying at anyway possible to overturn this election. what i found particularly interesting about these recent sort of stories is trump showing like how important and how much he appreciated the fact that if the justice department simply said there were problems with the investigation, simply just said something, we're not talking about using its criminal or civil powers, simply using the bullhorn that it had as the country's top law enforcement agency to discredit this election, he believed that may have been enough to get him to convince these folks at the state level to do more of what he wanted in throwing out these results. so, what we're seeing here is

this investigation, particularly on the senate side moving forward, getting these witnesses in front of them. some of people that were at the tippy top of the justice department to giving inside sense of what trump was pressuring them and pushing them to do. >> so george conway, we have grown numb to the scandals, the attacks on our constitutional norms, the attacks on american democracy from donald trump and those around him and when this story first broke several weeks ago, it seemed some people's eyes kind of glazed over and kept moving on. could you provide focus for us on just how dangerous this moment was in american history? >> well, this was absolutely one of the most dangerous moments in american history. the most dangerous moment ever caused by a president of the united states. and i think one of the reasons why some people's eyes glades over is a point mike just made which is that we've seen the movie before if some way that

he, that the president trump would try to coerce federal agencies into doing things that are questionable that benefit him personally. you know, even he tried to coerce a foreign country into doing something to benefit him. this was absolutely the most extreme possibility that he would actually try to use the arm, the mechanisms of government and particularly the department of justice to perpetuate himself in office unlawfully and to basically launch a self coup or and this was the height of protection, this was a potential probably criminal conspiracy. there are a number of provisions that could apply to this conduct. there is a conspiracy to defraud the united states, 18 us c-section 371, which is what the special council wrote and he used the charge the russian internet research agency. there is usc 610 which is my personal favorite in this situation. because it seems to easy to

apply, which is the criminal provision of the hatch act and what that statute provides is that the, it sham be unlawful for anybody and that would include the president of the united states to coerce or attempts to coerce a federal employee into engaging into political activity. what that would mean is that if donald trump had directed or tried to coerce an acting tomorrow rosen to walking down pennsylvania avenue with a trump 2020 flag, that would have been criminal. here this was much worse. he was attempting to coerce the department of justice, rosen into engaging in what was a purely political act, precisely because they had told the president there was no interests of the united states in this, that there was no illegality, there was no law enforcement function to be performed by the justice department and he, then donald trump went on to basically say, just say it, say

it, make this statement. you know, that was all as you point out just for political purposes it was for political purposes to influence the political branches, the congress to overturn the election to provide, influence the what the states were doling. and that again a purely political act. coerced by the president of the united states, who by the way as these reports make clear was basically threatening rosen with remove and substitution by jeffrey clark. the guy who was actually trying to, who was basically conspireing with the president to overturn the election. and that's coercion. and it fits this statute like a glove. justice department, i know there is an inspector general investigation should begin a criminal investigation. because there is sufficient pred indication for such investigation. >> george conway, stay with us. we want to get your take on a new column titled why

traditional conservatives should root for president biden's success. "morning joe" is coming right back. [ music playing ] right back [ music playing ♪ all by yourself.♪ - oh. - what? rain. cancel and stay? done. go with us and get millions of felixble booking options. expedia. it matters who you travel with.

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it's wireless so good, it keeps one upping itself. joe, i want to get your take on this column from michael gearsen. he has a new weiss in the washington post why traditional conservatives should root for biden's success. he was a top aid to george w. bush. he writes, many of us not naturally inclined to support a democratic president have developed a rooting interest if joe biden's political success. this is not mainly due to his skills or vision, it's because he is treating voters as fundamentally rational beings who calculate what is best for their families and communities. it carries the assumption of sanity. you might have blown up american

politics and hoping the political pieces would come down if proper places, instead, it is who have taken that approach. the society norms and institutions means nothing to him. so, joe, this is not a, you know, a broad support of joe biden's policy position, this is a support by michael gearsen, anyway, of sort of a resetting of political norms in the era of joe biden. >> right. it's interesting. and he was talking about sanity and temperament for the most part. george conway is having a conversation with a fellow conservatives, life long republicans who have left the party since donald trump. we are bemoaning the fact our choice now is between a party that right now is approaching policies that we have obviously problems with, whether you talk

about the speedy withdraw of afghanistan or bernie sander's $3.5 trillion budget bill that's going to be a reconciliation bill. that's on one side. on the other side, for me, it's not nicetys, political nicetys. on the other side you have a party against western democracy. if you are talking about donald trump's party that elevates people i can orvonn that praise the end of liberal democracy and brags about being ill liberal and so that's not really a choice at all. is it? we are left right now, really with no choice but to actually be against the party that continues to elevate people like donald trump. >> yeah. absolutely. i agree with that. the choice is between what i think is excessive deficit spending or a supreme court justice nominee that i don't like and the survival of american democracy. there is no question which side

you have to come out on. and what we're seeing today is a continuing threat to democracy. the whole point of the way a democracy survives is that people vote and they accept the results and then they work hard like the devil to persuade fellow citizens, they may have voted wrong, i got arguments why the policy x should be this or policy y should be that. that's normal democracy. that's the rationality the columnist is referring to here. that joe biden i think is trying to restore. right now you've got some significant percentage of the population who are now completely taken in by this big lie the election was stolen from them. if you believe that, well, then, you know, january 6th makes a lot of sense and now trump is praising ashley bab it and i will lionizing her.

>> coming up, olympic swimming champion katie ledecky. the 8th times she gives us notes on her swimming routine. all that straight ahead on "morning joe." t ahead on "morning joe." ♪

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chairman and members of the committee, thaumpths for inviting me to testify. i live in santa barbara with our beautiful toddler carl. every month since my diagnose, my motor neurons have died out. my muscles have disintegrated and i have become increasingly parapleased. i am speaking to you through this computer because my

diaphragm and tongue are simply not up to the test. although my story is tragic, it is not unique. in many ways, it is not so rare. every family is eventually confronted with serious illness or accidents, on the way we are born and die and so many days in between, all of us need medical care and yet in this country, the wealthiest in the history of human civilization we do not have an effective or fair or rational system for delivering that care. our time on this earth is the most precious resource we have. a medicare for all system will mean more time giving high quall care and for patients and our families, it will mean more time doing the things we love together. >> that was a clip from the new documentary "not going quietly." the film profiles activist and

loving father diagnosed with als at age 32 and who in spite of declining physical abilities embarks on a nationwide campaign for healthcare reform. joining us now is the film's executive producer. emmy award winning actor bradley whitford. it's great to have you back on the show and what an incredible film, what an incredible project? i'd love to, what inspired you about this is the first question. it's a little obvious. i'd love to hear your version of why you decided to focus in on this story? >> thank you so much. it's great to be here to talk about this film. i met ottie doing an action on behalf of the dreamers in los angeles. he is one of the most inspiring human beings i have ever met. he is incredibly funny, he is

relentless. he is challenging. and there are rarely do they come along these human beings who when confronted one imaginable suffering finds a calling to reduce the suffering for others. and ottie became a dear friend. he performed my marriage to my wife amy and this, his story is one of the most powerful of his generation and there was a film crew there. i found out at one point there had been a film crew following his work. and when he was struck down with a devastating diagnosis, he used it to challenge us as a country to increase access to healthcare

for everyone. and in the wake of a pandemic that has feasted on the most vulnerable among us, now is the time when this story needs to get out. so i am thrilled to be a part of it. >> jonathan lemire. >> hey, bradley, great to see you. it's certainly an inspiring story here. can you tell us a little bit more about what the lessons we should be drawing from this in terms of whether it's healthcare, whether it's government being able to try to do research for this particular als, obviously, devastating. there is no cure at this point. what lessons should we take from him and his relents will spirit in such a tragic diagnosis? >> obviously, there is work that needs to be done on als research. i know that ottie's concern is that people need access to healthcare. it is completely insane that we

live in a country where if i get sick because i have been lucky at a high school extracurricular activity, i know that i will be able take care of myself and that if someone has been laid off and doesn't having a says to healthcare at this time, they're out of luck. so, ottie feels focused on getting everyone the access to healthcare that they deserve. he believes access to healthcare is an absolute right. beyond that, what the story that this incredible documentary shows is ottie's religion is democracy. he truly believes that if we have a functioning democracy, which we do not have at the moment. but if we fight for that, that we can become so much greater than the sum of our individual parts and it goes back to something that john kennedy used to say, which is the future is

an acts of our own imagination and our own creation. and at a time where people are so cynic am about politics, here you have a guy with the most crushing personal situation imaginable who understands that action is the antidote to despair and despair is a luxury our children cannot afford. so it goes beyond the specific issues of healthcare into something very number am and very important. especially for young people who are understandably frustrated with where we are politically, despair again is a luxury that we cannot afford and ottie had a tremendous effect on the mid-terms. he used his illness to highlight the insanity of the lack of access to healthcare in this country.

ady. it made a real difference. >> professor, you got the next question. >> thank you so much for the fwift gift of this film. we talked about healthcare and the per ims of our democracy and the like. but there is also the pandemic of selfishness. there is a sense to which the example of ady is important at a moment specific power outages in our country. talk a little about him as an example of the kind of citizens we need to be in this moment of crisis that we face as a country? >> well, you know, ady embodies, we don't get democracy. we have to make it every dam day. and if we're not involved in the process, we sentence ourselves, you know, to a gulag governed by those who choose to participate.

and i think, i think what progressives face is basically a business agenda where political activity is not an extracurricular. it's a part of doing business. and ady is a reminder that we need constant engagement. right now, he's working on acbs, the health and community-based services. this is something that ady feels very strongly about. he is able, i just saw ady up in santa barbara and he is able to live at home because he knows that he is very lucky. he has people helping him do this. everybody deserves if they happen to be struck by an illness or as our parents age, they need to have the support so that they can stay at home.

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free style and gold medal in the 800 meter for the third olympics in a row. after adding a pair of silver medals, the three time olympian has a total of 10 olympic medals and her six golds are gold are most of any female swimmer in history. katie ledecky joins us now. so happy to see you. i was covering the london olympics in 2012, i remember here was the 15-year-old that took the games by storm. now you're swimming in your third olympics, still cleaning up. how strange were the games for you, first of all having them postponed by a year, i can't imagine what that did to training trying to lead up to last summer, having to wait a year. how rewarding to win two golds and two silvers after the wait. >> thanks for having me. great to be on the show. i think the lead up to the games were a lot different, very, very

different than the past two olympics i have been to. i was surprised how normal the games felt. i think we all went in, expecting it to feel completely different from what the normal games is like. i came away feeling i still got the full experience, some rookies at the first great olympics did get a great olympics, it was awesome. >> at the london games, you were the 15-year-old up start. once you won there, you became the target. you were it in women's olympic swimming. now in rio and tokyo, you continued to set the standard. what's it like having the rest of the world chasing you, to have that target on your back. >> it is fun. it is a good challenge. when i was 15, i was hunting and now i am the hunted. it is fun. it definitely pushes me. there were some great competitors in tokyo that gave me a great run. i had a lot of fun racing them.

it was a really great experience overall to be with team usa and to see so many veterans and youngsters coming up through the ranks, making a mark. >> i'm always interested whether it is someone like you or michael phelps who seem to be head and shoulders above the rest of the world. these are the most elite swimmers in america, next to you, the most elite swimmers in the world, and they seem to fall short of you. what is that difference for you? what is that edge and how do you keep it? >> it is just a lot of hard work over many, many years. i have been swimming since i was six years old. i love training. i always say, i love training almost more than i love the racing, which i think is a little unique. i just love getting to practice early, doing all the work, and i have been like that since i was really, really young. >> you know, katie, joe scarborough here, katie, this

past olympic games there were a lot of stories, and stories seem to suggest we were recognizing the tremendous pressure on athletes. we grew up with having too much pressure at a young age, it happened time and time again. pressure on someone like you absolutely extraordinary. we talk about the weight of the world on you as far as expectations go. i'm just curious for young athletes that want to follow in your footsteps, what is the balance, taking care of yourself balance. how do you keep balanced and measured as you push forward to be the best in the world? >> yeah. the keyword there is balance. i have people around me from family to my coaches to teammates at stanford to my professors at stanford, everyone

helps me live a balanced life. and i just finished my degree at stanford. in the pool, i try to stay focused on my own goals. i know other people set goals for me, have expectations, but if i stay focused on my goals, that's when i'm most successful. i feel like i did a great job of doing that leading into tokyo and that's why i was able to do what i did. >> i'm still old fashioned enough to see the gold medals around your neck as an american and get chills because what it means to be an american and cheer for another american at an olympic games, think back to mark spitz. seeing the gold medals for you. what's it like being on the world stage representing america and being able to bring home

gold medals for your country? >> we get chills, too. i had the opportunity to watch some of my teammates win gold and silver medals and bronze, and when i had the opportunity to sit in the stands, cheer them on, i would get goosebumps myself. i don't know if even the gold medal from london in 2012 has fully sunk in. when i was at stanford biking the campus, being there and being a student there was incredible. i pinched myself. when i am diving into the pool in practice, i get to be next to teammates i'm with and it is such an honor to represent team usa on the highest stage and to hear the national anthem, be on the podium, you just think of all of the people that went into getting you to that point. it is just a symbol, the medal, it is a result of hard work not

from myself but so many people. >> katie, we're thrilled you're here. thank you for bringing the medals. you let me hold one during the break. they are shockingly heavy. they're heavy, if you want to keep one on set -- the 100 meters you won with a time of 15 minutes, the idea of swimming that hard and that fast for 15 minutes makes me go weak in the knees. tell us what that race is like, how do you prepare for that and what does it mean to be the first olympic champion. >> it was neat. we went one, two in that event. never gone one, two with a teammate at the olympic stage. i talked about how we wanted team usa off today best possible note in that event and we did. there are so many great female swimmers that didn't have the opportunity to swim at the olympics and deserve that.

we have great female distance swimmers. that's why i wanted that american flag to be listed as the first winner of that event. >> katie, before we let you go, ask you about 2024. we expect you to be there in paris, that will be exciting. four more years after that, the games will be in los angeles. do you have 2028 circled on the calendar? >> i will deal with 2028 after 2024. it is intriguing given it is in l.a., not many swimmers have an opportunity to swim in an olympics on home soil. i know i have things to accomplish outside the pool as well and i have to kind of assess where i'm at in life at each stage. right now, i can tell you with confidence i want to work towards 2024, be there in paris. i have to work on french. took french in school, one of my outside the pool goals the next three years. i would be thrilled to swim in

l.a., but we'll see, whether i am swimming or not, i know i'll be there. >> sub text, dude, it is seven years away, leave me alone. enjoy the olympics now. thanks for being here, the country is proud of you. there weren't a lot of people in the stands but we were in front of tvs cheering for you. >> thank you, we could hear the cheers. >> congratulations and good luck. why don't we end where we began. a side note, i have been informed by john highland, we overlooked two rock gods ever the 1960s, hate to say he is right, one jimi hendrix, i have to revisit my list. he has to be in the top five

within my list of '60s rock gods. led zeppelin lynn, date them 1971. that's a band that started in the 1960s. they of course need to be there, even though tom nichols and others may complain. what's your weekend plans, willie? >> my weekend plans, i have a show to host sunday. we talked about that. we'll relax. it will be 160 degrees in new york, lay low, pop open one of the fire hydrants, play stick ball like we used to. >> i'll be right there as always. my kids and i love to do it. papa, can we play stick ball at uncle willie's. jonathan lemire, we are watching the boston red sox swept by the last place baltimore orioles. >> my weekend will involve baseball little league, won't be

corn fields, taking my son on a road trip to philadelphia, going to the phillies game tomorrow. phillies, reds. i don't know if kevin costner will be there, good time all the same. >> sounds like a good weekend. see you back monday. enjoy the ball game. that does it for us. we will be here back on monday morning. ayman mohyeldin picks up the coverage frmt. hey, good morning. i am ayman mohyeldin. we are covering major stories. a cdc panel will meet whether booster shots should be authorized for people with weak immune systems as the fda recommended it yesterday with the delta variant ravaging many parts of the country. hospitals in many cities are overrun, and