richard besser, the former acting director of the cdc. dr. besser, thank you for coming on. as we just saw laid out there by nick, we are seeing a tale of two governors in a state that we are seeing a surge in coronavirus. on one hand you have the republican governor of florida playing down the data and ordering schools to reopen. and then, on the other hand, the republican governor of texas acknowledging businesses need to close again, there could be a surge in deaths. what are the consequences of these conflicting messages to the public? >> i think this is one of the biggest challenges we face with this pandemic. and it's that clash of messages where every public health leader in the nation is saying the same thing. it's early days in this pandemic, it's extremely dangerous. what we do individually, what we do as a society will determine how severe this is going forward. and then you hear from politicians a real mix. you hear some who are saying echoing and reinforcing the public health message and then others who are saying there's really nothing to worry about, it's over

richard besser. president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation.here are we now at this particular moment as far as the search for a vaccine or treatment for covid-19? what does it mean when organizations announce promising results? >> i'm concerned about overhype with a vaccine. it's amazing the effort and dollars that are going into developing a vaccine, and it gives me hope that we will get there. but there have been other efforts for other viruses that haven't panned out. for coronavirus, we're still a long way from having a vaccine that is proven to be safe and effective. >> and cases in the u.s. are surging. in some places, local leaders are threatening another lockdown. would you say that's needed at this moment to beat the virus back down? >> it's not the same in all places. as long as testing can improve, so that you're able to quickly identify new cases and do contact tracing and isolation and quarantine, that can be a strategy. but in places where transmission is out of control, where icus and hospitals are full, moving to some tighter f

besser? >> well, you know, i think part of that is on target in that you need to respond to the situation that's happening locally. so in a place with widespread disease, you can't think about opening the schools. but in a place that has the pandemic under control where numbers have been going down, where you're slowly opening the economy, then the other half isn't right. you have to have the same approach. that means configuring schools in ways that are going to be safer for children. that means fewer children in the classroom, checking air flow so that air flow is turning over more so the kids aren't exposed to whatever's in the air as much. putting up barriers. the upside of this pandemic, jake, is that most children who get this will do fine. not all, but most will do fine. but that's not true for staff. that's not true for teachers. and so you need to make sure that schools are safe not just for children but for everyone who's working there. and children go home and they go home to grand

richard besser. he was one of the four former directors of the cdc who today published this op-ed in "the washington post" entitled, "we ran the cdc selena no president ever politicized its science the way trump had." dr. besser, good to see you again, and thank you for joining us. >> thanks, ali. nice to be here. >> you and your four colleagues who ran the cdc wrote in the op-ed in "the washington post," public health experts face two opponents, covid-19, but also political leaders and others attempting to undermine the centers for disease control and prevention. richard, i want to remind our viewers that a couple of months ago the cdc had prepared -- it had already been done -- a document that would allow churches, schools, workplaces, everybody to safely return to work and to reopen. and for some reason that document was shelved. it was kept from the public and nobody at the cdc could explain why the white house was hanging on to it either. we're trying to figure out what's behind the cdc's politi

richard besser, great to have your expertise. thank you very much. >> thank you. >>> stimulus talks resume today as millions of unemployed americans need more help. can congress come to an agreement? the house majority whip is going to join us next. house democrats are demanding an investigation into the federal law enforcement actions against protesters in portland, oregon. they say the trump administration's actions abused emergency authorities and violates constitutional rights. joining me is democratic congressman jim clyburn, house majority whip. thank you for being with us. we are going to speak at length about the death of your close friend and really american icon, congressman john lewis, in a moment and i am sorry for that loss. >> thank you. >> the democrats calling for an investigation into what's happening in portland. what do you want to know? >> i'd like to know who ordered those people who be there. the way i understand things, it seems that somebody had to be deputized by the attorney general or some order from hi

richard besser in a moment and head to hotspots of the hardest hit states for the latest.ut we begin with the latest from the white house and miami correspondent monica alba joins me and what's blowing up the white house world is excerpts from this interview the president conducted with cbs, some startling ones, comments of george floyd, police reform. let me get right to them and play, i believe, the order that we have here, the first one to do with george floyd. take a listen. >> let's talk about george floyd. you said his death was a terrible thing. >> terrible. >> why are african-americans still dying at the hands of law enforcement in this country? >> so are white people. so are white people. what a terrible question to ask. so are white people. more white people by the way. more white people. >> so, monica, that was one. i want to get through a couple, everything first and then get to it. he was asked about the issue over the confederate monuments. take a listen to this answer. >> president trump, back in 2015 you said the confederate battle flag belongs in a museum.

besser, if you are still able to listen.hank you, sir. >>> the president is set to speak from the white house in just a matter of minutes. once he begins, we'll take you there live. we have a whole team around to fact check if and when that's necessary. >>> plus much more on the "operation legend." the justice department is deploying federal agents to cities as racial and injustice protests grow. we'll take to the mayor of kansas city, next. save hundreds on your wireless bill without even leaving your house. just keep your phone and switch to xfinity mobile. you can get it by ordering a free sim card online. once you activate, you only have to pay for the data you need, starting at just $15 a month. there are no term contracts, no activation fees, and no credit check on the first two lines. get a $50 prepaid card when you switch. 5g is now included with all new data options. switch and save hundreds. xfinity mobile. . >>> welcome back. as we wait for the president, we're going to turn to his other appearance today. they ann

richard besser is the c.e.o.bert wood johnson foundation, which, for the record, is a funder of the newshour. dr. besser,hank you very much for being here. your editorial said we ran the c.d.c. no president ever politicized how has he done so? trumpas. >> what we're seeing, william, is a clash of messages. we hear every public health leader in the nation talking about how serious this pandemic is, talking about the steps we need to take as individuals and as a nation to ensure that we minimize the damage to peose's lind then we hear politicians, starting at the whithouse, talk about how there's nothing to worry about. how public health ivelaying this. and the injection ofolitics into a public health response is extremely dangerous for the nation. c.d.c. is the nehing tation's publico -- nation's publi health agency and their guidance ensures what states do and by undermining the trust in that guidance, it put people's lives at risk. >> what are some of the real-world effects of this politicizing of that science?

besser for setting the record straight. appreciate it. >>> a doctor in san antonio spoke with the "today" show about a 30-year-old patient who succumbed to the virus after attend ag covid party with the intention of getting sick. >> before the patient died, they looked at their nurse and said, "i think i made a mistake." i thought this was a hoax, but it's not." >> beto o'rourke a former texas democratic congressman and presidential candidate who joins me now. good to see you again. congressman, let's talk about the bad information that is getting out there, and what's happening in your state? >> andrea, this is a function of leadership, or lack thereof. dr.osterholm talked about others have been able toll do. germany has a population of roughly 83 million. an example. texas, 29 million. yesterday in germany you saw about 250 new cases. in the state of texas, 8,200. in our state it's san antonio, it's the rio grande valley, houston, my home town of el paso. dallas. every single part of the state is seeing record new cases,

richard besser, former acting director of the cdc. dr. besser, good to see you.k, i guess the one up side to what we saw this morning is that we saw dr. redfield. he went on, he at least spoke as the head of the cdc and we hadn't seen that a lot, what should we take away from all of this. >> well, it is good to see the head of the cdc out there. and i think the more we see that, the better. you know, it is not unusual for cdc to revise guidelines. we did it all the time. and you do it when there is new science. what concerns me is if there would be a revision of guidance that was due to political pressure. the guidance that cdc put out for reopening schools provided a lot of detailed information of what needs to happen for schools to open safely and, you know, i'm a pediatrician and i'm a parent and i know we have got to get kids back to school. but you have to do it safely. and thankfully most kids are going to do well, but you have to make sure teachers are safe and staff are safe. and cdc guidelines call for a lot of changes in terms of how classrooms are set

richard besser, the former acting director of the cdc. dr. besser, thanks as usual for joining us.ou've had a chance to look at the results so far, still early, but how much hope should people take away from the first published results of this potential american vaccine? >> well, you know, wolf, i think it's better than having negative results. but i would like to inject caution that it's stilly early. you know, the vaccine was shown to induce an immune response, and that's something you'd like to see. but it hasn't been tried in terms of does it prevent infection, and that's going to be key. it hasn't been tested in terms of safety. so we have a long way to go. and during that long way to go we need to be focused on the public health response here in america to get this under control. >> what do we need to do now, doctor, to get this under control? clearly it's by no means under control? >> yeah, i think one of the biggest challenges we're seeing right now, wolf, is the politicization of this, the injection of politics into a public health response. you know, never in my career at

we'll talk with atlanta mayor tisha lance bottoms, former ngo richard besser and former fda commissioner dr. scott gottlieb then continue our look at the challenges of getting the nation's students back to school with a new head of the university of california system dr. michael drake. it's all just ahead on "face the nation". . >> brennan: good morning, welcome to "face the nation." on a daily basis, states in the sun belt and parts of the west as well as the u.s. overall are breaking records with the numbers of new cases of covid 19. twice last week, the u.s. recorded more than 70,000 new cases a day. getting closer to dr. fauci's prediction we might be headed to 100,000 a day. we will bring you latest on the virus, first bob schieff look backs on congressman louis's life and legacy. >>> john lewis was a share croppers based on in 1940 in a part of georgia was so segregated he had seen only two white people by his sixth birthday. >> some of these chicken will shake their heads, they never quite said. but i'm convinced that some of those chickens that i preached to in the four times and

besser, elise jordan here.tegy against coronavirus is winning, but last week we saw a spike in single-day cases of over 50,000 new cases. in your opinion, what would a winning national strategy to combat coronavirus look like? >> a winning curve would be what you see with europe, where the numbers are going down and down across many different countries and cultures. it says you can tackle this. the approach is one of having people shelter in place, in pla stay-at-home orders to drive the numbers down, and then switching over to a model where you're able to identify every case in every community, and then have public health track those individuals, see who they had contact with. and then ensuring that everyone has the opportunity to isolate and quarantine. it takes data down to the zip code level and data broken down by race and ethnicity so the impact we've seen among black americans, latino americans, native americans, doesn't continue over the next months as this progresses. if we're not looking at things ot

richard besser. explain why this matters now, right, how does that help us as we chart a path forward? >> you know, it tells us a couple things. one, there's a lot of disease transmission that's going on that we don't see. and we have had signals of that because we're learning that a significant number of people will get this infection and have no symptoms or mild symptoms so they wouldn't have gone for treatment. the estimate of the higher numbers come from looking at blood, the antibodies, the protective factors. the other part of this, it points to how incredibly critical it is that we have widespread testing available so that anyone with mild symptoms can get tested ant get the results back quickly. we are seeing the results in many places take a week to come back and that removes the value of the test for any public control. you need the results back within two days. >> we're at about 4 million now, so call that 40 million americans that's still well below herd immunity, right, which would be we

richard besser. known you for a long time. i'll tell you what, none of us have ever seen anything like what they're trying to do to fauci. could you imagine when you were trying to keep america straight on what you were dealing with from the cdc, the president had his people trash talking you to blame you for what was going on. >> yeah, you know, chris, in 2009 when i was running cdc during the start of the swine flu, dr. fauci and i were often side by side. what you want to see in the response to a pandemic is the lead from the national institutes of health, which is dr. fauci and the cdc, which is usually the cdc director, talking together. one talking hard science and one talking public health. in this pandemic, dr. fauci has been the voice of all of public health science. and i have to say that, you know, he's -- he is a brilliant scientist, a committed public servant. he is somebody who speaks truth to power and he's walked a fine line across his entire career in being successful in administrations of both parties. he is

besser is joining us. as you know, there are now more than 3 million cases of coronavirus here in the united states. when you see numbers that high, what do you fear the next few weeks and months here in the u.s. are going to look like? >> well, what worries me, wolf, is that even though states that have been able to turn the curve around and see major declines in the number of cases are going to be really stressed to try and keep that progress going forward. as we think about trying to get the schools open, you have to get community transmission under control. and in so many states we're seeing just the opposite. we're seeing areas that were having low rates of transmission now seeing much higher rates of transmission. and that's a very dangerous situation when you think about school re-opening. >> some of the white house task force experts are actually saying they're seeing encouraging signs from the country's current hot spots right now. do you see any evidence of that? >> well, i mean, when you see it

richard besser about this. he used to run the cdc right after this decision came out i happened to be chatting with him. listen to how he framed it. >> given how political the response has been to date, it's a step backwards to have these data going directly to hhs in washington. it's another example of cdc being sidelined. and not only should the data be coming to cdc, but cdc should be talking to the public through the media every day. >> i'll tell you, jake. you know, at the beginning of this outbreak, as you may remember, we used to go to each department of health and each state and basically collect that data. at some point they said, okay, it's now going to go to the centralized sort of reporting through the cdc. that's how we've been getting these numbers and the data that we present on your program every day. if need be, we will go back to that old method and go to the states as well. because it's not entirely clear to me that we're going to have as good access to this data going forward. >> and let's a

besser, always good to have you here. thanks for joining us. >>> still ahead, the health crisis that created an economic crisis. another 1.4 million people in the past week looking for a job this morning. where congress stands on a deal to extend unemployment benefits before they expire. >>> plus, round after round of tear gas in portland overnight with the city's mayor caught in the middle. why the mayor of kansas city is keeping a close eye on what's happening in portland. he joins us next. usaa is made for what's next we're helping members catch up by spreading any missed usaa insurance payments over the next twelve months so they can keep more cash in your pockets for when it matters most find out more at usaa.com for when it matters most ♪ ♪ now is the time to support the places you love. spend 10 dollars or more at a participating small business and get 5 dollars back, up to 10 times with american express. enroll now at shopsmall.com. save without even leaving your house. just keep your phone and switch to xfinity m

richard besser under president obama. dr.ser, when you hear about it this way, the cdc was slow in some ways, but their data was all out there. you could see all of it. now we're apparently not going to see it. you say this is a step backwards. now consequential is the move? >> well, i see it, erin, as another sign of cdc being sidelined. cdc is the nation's public health agency. there are thousand of scientists there, epidemiologists who understand data and what it can teach you. the idea that data would not go to the cdc but would go directly to washington to the department of health and human services, it doesn't make a lot of sense when you think about how response should be taking place. >> dr. fauci today made headlines in terms of his role in this. he said he wasn't involved in the decision. here's the exchange. >> if you have what is arguably the world's greatest public health agency at your disposal, why sideline them? >> i don't know, ed. i had not been involved in that. i would like to give you a rr reasonable expl

richard besser joins us, former acting director of the cdc, now president and ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation. i want to start first with hospitals and specifically ppe. we're hearing that some states are running short again. this is like deja vu all over again. and the administration says, no, no problem. the hospitals are just stockpiling supplies. what's the truth? >> well, this is a flashback. this is what happens when you see a pandemic getting out of control. and it doesn't have to be that way. we are seeing states that have been able to turn the tide and reduce the numbers, and then we're seeing states where people are not following the guidance or not wearing masks and social distancing and doing those steps to reduce transmission. but you will overwhelm the health care system if you go back to normal and you pretend there's no pandemic raging on. we're seeing a lot of increase in disease transmission around young people but that won't stay restricted to young people. it's going to -- young people have contact with older people, people with medical problems, and i r

besser, thank you so much for joining us this morning. we appreciate it. >>> just moments ago, breaking news. this is not a surprise, though. we learned the president is going to be holding a press conference just a few moments from now. we'll bring that to you live. it's no surprise. he did it last month after we got the jobs report. we're already seeing the markets up. the president is going to take this as a very big positive and for all of those who are back to work, it is a positive. but, remember, we have got a long way to go. >>> plus, congressional leaders hoping this morning that they'll get the answers they're looking for when the trump administration officials brief them on the intelligence that russia allegedly paid bounties to the taliban to kill u.s. troops in afghanistan. house speaker nancy pelosi will be in that briefing, and she joins us next from capitol hill. alright, i brought in ensure max protein to give you the protein you need with less of the sugar you don't. [grunting noise] i'll take that. woohoo! 30 grams of p

richard besser, always good to see you. hope you and your family are doing well. thanks for your time this morning, rich. take care. >> thanks so much, robin. great to see you. >> okay. all right. michael. >> thank you, robin. >>> to washington now and that surprise shakeup in president trump's re-election campaign. his campaign manager suddenly demoted and replaced as the president faces tough, new poll numbers. our senior white house correspondent cecilia vega has more. good morning, cecilia. >> reporter: hey, michael. good morning to you. so we're just 110 days out. this is a major shake-up. longtime campaign manager brad parscale demoted. he will now run the digital operation and bill stepian takes the top job involved in the 2016 campaign and was the white house political director. i'm told he's someone president trump is comfortable with but in many ways this is not a surprise. in 2016 the president had three different campaign managers. this time, though, you just mentioned it, those polls showing president trump trailing joe biden by double digits national

besser just noted many americans infected with coronavirus dealing with symptoms for months including texas nurse who fought off double pneumonia and repeated bouts of high fever. story of her three-month battle with the virus and what she's seeing now that she's back at work. you don't want to miss it. it's next. i remember setting up shipstation. one or two clicks and everything was up and running. i was printing out labels and saving money. shipstation saves us so much time. it makes it really easy and seamless. pick an order, print everything you need, slap the label onto the box, and it's ready to go. our costs for shipping were cut in half. just like that. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get 2 months free. >>> the coronavirus outbreak surging in texas. it state reporting more than 10,000 new cases today, the highest single day total in texas since this pandemic began. i want to bring in now angela, a nurse who treated covid patients but she herself battled the virus for three months. thank you for joining us, angela. you doing okay? >>

richard besser, former acting director of the cdc, who joins us now. always good to have you. so much to talk to you about today. first, this moderna news. i know last time we were talking it was another company, also with promising technology, and you urged caution, optimistic but urged caution. how do you feel about this? >> you know, neil, again, it's great to have a positive result but it is important to be cautious here. this is what's called a phase 1 trial. so it's the earliest stage of a company's trial and it looks to see whether there's any signs that this could be dangerous, that it could have a toxicity that would mean you wouldn't want to go forward to a bigger trial, and it's where you figure out what dose of vaccine you want to give to people. so it's terrific that this gave people an antibody response. what we will need to see going forward is does it do that in a larger population, is it safe, and do those antibodies confer protection. we don't know that yet. it hasn't been determined what profile of antibodies will correlate or be lin

richard besser, thank you for that unvarnished look at all this. >>> still to come, new reporting about russia paying taliban fighters to kill american soldiers. new york times correspondent has the latest. she joins me next. rators, rators, microwaves, gas ranges and grills. and if you're looking for... (grilled cheese sizzles) (timer chimes) swithout even on yoleaving your house. just keep your phone and switch to xfinity mobile. you can get it by ordering a free sim card online. once you activate, you'll only have to pay for the data you need- starting at just $15 a month. there are no term contracts, no activation fees, and no credit check on the first two lines. get a $50 prepaid card when you switch. 5g is now included with all new data options. switch and save hundreds. xfinity mobile. >>> a pretty good rule of thumb in the trump era is if the president calls something a hoax, it's true. he called the u.s. intelligence about russian criminal sabotage a hoax. he called intel reports of russia attempting to sabotage the upcoming election a hoax. he even cast criticism of his respon

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i talked to rich besser who used to run the cdc.e is concerned about the lack of transparency and the opaqueness this will add to it. i'll tell you two things that journalists since the very beginning of the story we were going straight to the department of health and collecting the data ourselves, and if that's what needs to be done, we'll start doing that again to get the data and best be able to analyze this ourselves because i'm worried, given how things have transpired that we may not be getting a full picture as a result of this change of this data going to hhs and cdc. i hate to say that because i have a lot of friends who work at hhs, but we have to consider that a real possibility. >> other countries attempting to do that, russia, china, brazil in the past and not the u.s. this is a question a lot of folks watching here want to know about. a closer look at when it comes to sending kids back to school, when is it safe and how easily can children spread the virus? that's coming up right after this break. now is the time for a

besser, thank you so much for joining me. always great to have you here.e back, i want to continue to talk about safety, keeping our kids safe, because it's not happening. not this week. we saw a 1-year-old shot and killed in a stroller. a 9-year-old, shot while making a tiktok video. all of that in the last few days. what we are learning about the spike in gun sales and gun violence in the united states of america. violence in the united states of america. book two separate qualifying stays and earn a free night. the open road is open again. and wherever you're headed, choice hotels is there. book direct at choicehotels.com. ♪ and wherever you're headed, choice hotels is there. we could never do what they do. but what we can do it be a partner that never quits. verizon is the most reliable network in america. built for interoperability and puts first responders first, giving their calls priority, 24/7. we do what we do best so they can too. >>> this morning, stark and upsetting new numbers coming out of new york city. 53 people shot from friday to monday.

briefing every day, give it the seriousness it deserves with ebola and we saw with h1n1 and richard besser. two, i'm still baffled by testing. we started testing late. there was problems with the original test. that's fine. people talked about that. now we're here july 9th and we still have significant problems with testing. two months ago ambassador birx said we're going to have a big breakthrough with regard to antigen testing. we haven't had breakthroughs. it's mind boggling to me so challenging, wochl, for you to get testened so you could go to work and be confident you didn't have the virus. i'm going to send my kids to school. how confident am i they don't have the virus. they, themselves, are carrying it. we could be at that point. we can have widespread, available, accurate, rapid testing. that would definitely be part of the plan. finally, wolf, people say shutdowns may be part of an aggressive strategy that's still needed, if we wore masks in public, we know from real world data what's happening now how much of an impact it could make. the virus as scary as it is isn't a jumper.

richard besser, thank you for that unvarnished look at all this. >>> still to come, new reporting about russia paying taliban fighters to kill american soldiers. new york times correspondent has the latest. she joins me next. when we started our business we were paying an arm and a leg for postage. i remember setting up shipstation. one or two clicks and everything was up and running. i was printing out labels and saving money. shipstation saves us so much time. it makes it really easy and seamless. pick an order, print everything you need, slap the label onto the box, and it's ready to go. our costs for shipping were cut in half. just like that. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. go to shipstation.com/tv and get 2 months free. medicare alone only covers 80% of your costs, up. shipstation. the #1 choice of online sellers. leaving you to pay the rest. try the new fitscore from healthmarkets, your insurance marketplace. it instantly pairs you with plans that fit your insurance needs by comparing thousands of plans from nationwide companies to help maximize your savings and get

like we saw with rich besser during h1n1. every day, perhaps at the state level there needs to be coronavirus task force coordinators. and we need to basically have plans in each state supplanted by and reinforced by significant testing and contact tracing. it's the basic public health stuff that's been talked about from the beginning. but we never did it. it's like a patient who has cancer stage i, here's the treatment, now it's metastatic, they didn't do the treatment and they're saying, what's the plan here? the plan was this back at stage i and it's got to be more aggressive now that the cancer has start to spread. >> there's also the concern, andy, as we look at this, as states are trying to pull back and trying to put more restrictions in place over whether people will actually follow them after they've had a little taste of this freedom. is it your sense, though, that the american people are recognizing that this is here to stay and it will not go away, unless they are part of the solution. >> well, look, i think that

richard besser, ceo of the robert wood johnson foundation and former acting director of the cdc. thank you so much for your time. >> thank you. >> nawaz: now the first in a special series of reports about rethinking college during covid. many students, families and of course, colleges and universities are indeed rethinking about what this fall will be like as the pandemic reshape the higher education landscape. our series begins with community colleges, which educate about 40% of post-secondary students in this country. many were already stretched thii before the pan but surveys indicate enrollment is likely to increases students and workers shift plans. correspondent hari sreenivownan looks atne community college and its students are faring. >> reporter: maryland's montgomery college, just outside d.c., is eerily quiet these days. during a typical july, the school's three campuses would be bustling with summerchool students. but, like so many colleges and learning here has shifted from classrooms and labs to bedrooms and living rooms. ♪ ♪ montgomery college is one of the niuntry