the trauma ministration is really responding to is the fact that there was essentially a kind of checkmate to their move over to talk in the last week and as you and i have talked about on the show before the fact is the drug administration came forward and said we're said the deadline and to talk has to be sold that's the u.s. canada new zealand and australia operations by essentially september 15th by dance look like they were going to do it and then the chinese that was the checkmate was when they came in and said we're changing the rules making sure you understand you can't do this now all of a sudden we went from there will be an announcement about to talk in a couple of days to everything seems to a stalled out so so far it seems like that move by the chinese kind of worked in countering what trump was trying to do by essentially taking away the most successful social media company in the world right now and handing it to an american company and in the meantime the response to that i think from the german ministration is they don't want to look like china got the best though it will

i think the democrats have been checkmated light now, and their hope is that it really angers and energizes their base. vonnie: president trump also at the unga bashing china today. it was clearly a speech for his own base as opposed to the general assembly, which also includes china. xi spoke in a recorded statement after trump. do these kinds of speeches resonate with his base? greg: absolutely. they love to hear that. if this election will be decided in pennsylvania and michigan, his blue-collar base loves to hear rhetoric like this, absolutely. vonnie: we have to leave it there. thank you, greg valliere. the first word news with mark crumpton. mark: you and greg were just discussing president trump and china. the president today blamed china for the coronavirus pandemic. in a speech to the u.n. general assembly come he called on the body to punish beijing. in his remarks, taped at the white house, he said china did not share timely information with the world about covid-19 and how it is transmitted. mr. trump trump also used his speech to criticize china's environmental record. we will

. >> sean: checkmate, he won 49 states.ow all of a sudden the mob in the media, they don't dare ask the question about 77-year-old biden's mental acuity. i'm not a doctor but he looks fragile, tired, weak to me. these constant embarrassments are beginning to raise a lot of serious questions. people in the country are talking about it, whether the mob wants to cover it up or not. the confusion, the bouts of anger, come on man. no one outside of this network seems to be willing to broach the subject, we will do our job. they are actively trying to cover up his apparent issues. over there at state-run conspiracy television msdnc, they seemingly cropped out what appeared to be a written script, having a casual video conversation with kamala harris. you can actually see biden in that picture, he's holding the phone upside down. ultimately the biden campaign is hoping that kamala harris will bring a much-needed boost of energy, charisma, alertness that biden clearly lacks. fundamentals for the hardest job in the world and there i

he has, in fact, put in place how he can checkmate american democracy by putting in a judge that will guarantee, if proceedings go through the courts up to the supreme court, his re-election. and for him to be able to checkmate american democracy, is, in fact, a coup rather than an election. and this is the challenge the republicans have to deal with from the public if you insist on doing what you should not be doing you should at least make sure they recuse themselves otherwise you've handed over this democracy to a whole situation that is nothing short of that we are now going into an autocracy headed by a man who is not able to get through a sentence without revealing his inner most thoughts of ultimate power. >> let's bring in staff writer at "the atlantic" barton gelman, whose latest piece is titled "the election that could break america". also with us professor of government brendon nyan. good to have you both on board this morning. >> barton, let me ask you about your report that trump will first claim victory before mail ballots are tabulated and prevail in a republican state

and that's critically important because in the electoral college chess match, florida's close to a checkmateo lose that. back to arizona for a minute, if the election returns are more modest for joe biden than polls suggest today, let's say he doesn't win florida, doesn't win north carolina, wins michigan, wins pennsylvania, but doesn't win wisconsin. he wins arizona, he's the president-elect. that's why trump's down there today. but florida is critical. unlike arizona, you know, the latino population, obviously the cuban vote is the largest vote down there. but you've got the colombian community, puerto rican community, venezuelan community. so it's a really complicated state. it's a huge state. it's like six states in one. so joe biden, i'm sure, is going to spend all the money he can and be down there as much as he can and kamala harris as she was last week. but this bloomberg money is critically important to fight back against disinformation, sure. but there's a lot of these voters down there that haven't gotten positive information about joe biden and what he wants to do. and just like

, this is somebody who if he -- if it looks like in his chess game his opponent is moving toward checkmate, he will overturn the board. ping that was one of the big takeaway messages last night. he'll interrupt a debate, he'll discredit an election. he'll say or do whatever he has to do to avoid losing. and this is something that president trump has said pretty much from the beginning. he's proud of it. he'll do anything to win, even fit means violating norms, telling falsehoods, outraging everybody in the process. i think he managed to do a lot of that last night. that is his strategy. i don't know if it's a very effective one, but of course we're going to find out in just a few weeks. >> in fact, errol, you talk about upsetting the chess board, you don't think it was effective, errol, with groups that the president will need if he wants to win re-election. >> i was watching and just shaking my head last night. the bullying and the bombast and the personal affectation. i'm thinking to myself, i know a lot of suburban women. i grew up in the suburbs. there are a lot of suburban women who r