risking hilife t keep vital products flowing >> announc: thiss "nbc nighy news" th lester holt. >>> od eveng, everyone it is working. keep doing it. that's the message on this holiday weekend from authorities who fear americans lifted by encouraging headlines about the pace ocovid cases could drop their guard and send numbers soaragain. and to be very clear here, we are still deep in th woods with ameranare dying at blistering pace night as t worldwide total tops 100,000. agn, o team is fanned out t cover it all let's start with nbc's gabe gutierrez. reporter:he wave of ambulances in new york is less frequent the state announced fewer icu admissions and fewer deaths fm coronarus than the dabefore the most encouraging that t curve is flattening thgovernor ss it's to relax. want to kn i still how this happened. because the warning signs were there. and if you don't know e answer, then how do you know it's not going to haen again >> reporter: the ndemic's death toll here in the nation's epicenter could be much higher. during the first five days of oplel, morthan100 wereronounced dead home

hilife mattered. all lives matter.said philonise floyd, who called for the conviction of the officers, and even the white house is coming up with proposals as protesters ask if any of them will make a difference. our bbc reporter has more. porter: less than 24 hours ago, philonise floyed durr -- burried hisrother in texas. today come he came to washington to plead with politicians to ensure that george was not killed in vain. philonise: his kh s have to waat video. it just hurts. it is a lot of people with a lot of pain. i family, they just c and cry every day. they just asked, "why? why?" he pleaded for his life. he said heou not breathe. nobody cared, nobody. reporter: it was allbo changes needing to be made in s.police for some like in minneapolis where floyd was killed say they are going to reform anyway but t acknowledgt training cannot solve all of their ills. >> i struggle when i watch that video that i did not see humanity. i did not see humanity. reporter: and, arguably, the lack of humanity has been displayed

hilife, career, and legacy are examined in a new book, "the man who ran washington" written by two veteranjournalists susan glasser and peter baker. and they join me now. welcome to both of you. peter baker, we know you as the white house correspondent for the new york times. susan, we know you as a writer for the new yorker. in real life, you are married to each other. susan, tell us, how did you decide to write a book about somebody who has not been -- held public office in almost 30 years? susan: i think jim baker is a unique figure of the last half-century. he is someone that combines the portfolio of karl rove and henry kissinger. he ran five presidential campaigns, was also the secretary of state when the cold war ended. and i see for peter and i, it was really an opportunity to write a big book about washington from the end of watergate, the end of the cold war, and how different it is from today and the gridlock and dysfunction very different from a time when baker was famous for getting things done. judy: peter, i think of the phrase born with a silver spoon in his mouth. jim bake

complexity of that relationship, i think, plays out througall of his relationships s with women throughout hilife. with one wife after another. there's a, an inability to reach any recognizable level of intimacyra >> nr: young donald had his own crisis: finding his place in a family dominated by his father, fred, a stern and demanding real estate developer. >> i strongly suspect that he had a relationip with his father that accounts for a lot of what he became. and his father was a very brutal guy. he was a tough, hard-driving guy who had very, very littleot nal intelligence, to use today's terms. >> donald's father's overall h message children was-- and it was a very different message to the boys than to the girls-- to the boys, was, "compete, win, be a killer. do what you have to to win." >> narrator: inside the family, a harsh game of apprentice: who would ke over fred's empire? the fit in line wasn't donald, it was his oer brother freddy. >> my father was sensitive, he was nd and genous, he liked hanging out with his friends who adored him, and, may worst of all, although it's hard to say, he