joining us are philip rucker, msnbc political analyst, nbc senior politics editor beth fouhy, and andrew desiderio with politico. good to have you with us this evening. beth fouhy, let me start with you. what do you think the biden campaign needs to do now? >> well, a lot of democrats, i think, were frustrated that it took him several days to step forward and speak for himself on this very serious allegation. it had been left to others around him, supporters of vice president biden, including a number of the women who might be on his list for his vp, people like elizabeth warren, to sort of speak out on his behalf. nancy pelosi had to do that as well. so there was no question joe biden needed to step forward and speak for himself. now he has on "morning joe." he's unequivocally denying that anything tara reade is alleging ever happened. he's repeating that all the time. he says it's unequivocal, didn't happen, didn't happen. meanwhile, however, she's continuing to make those claims. she's giving interviews to various other news organizations. she gave an interview, for example, with the

yamiche, weijia jiang, susan page and philip rucker.e will be taking you as close to the news a we can. this discussion will continue on the "washington week" extra. find it on our website or our social media. but for now, i'm robert costa. good night from washington. [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, d ich is responsible for its caption content accuracy.visit ncicap.org] ♪ announcer: corporate funding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> life isn't a straight line, and sometimesa you cn find yourself heading in a new direction. fidelity is here to help you work through the unexpected. with financial planning and advice for today d tomorrow. ♪ >> kaiser permanente. addional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and patricia yuen, committed to briing cultural differences in o communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and byco ributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. nathan masters: at midnight on january 17, 1920, theur manufa sell, and transportation o

>>reenivasan: philip rucker of the "washington post," thanks so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> sreenivasan: officials in atlanta, georgia are reeling, after peaceful demonstrations turned violent. newshour weekend's christopher booker has more. >> we are all in this. this hurts. this hurts everybody in this room. but what are you changing by tearing up a city? >> reporter: atlanta mayor keisha lance bottoms' impassioned question came after a night of intense confrontation between protestors and city police. earlier in the day, as the s started to set, demonstrators had gathered near atlanta's centennial olympic park to march to the state capitol. the night rned as splinter groups broke from the peaceful assembly, and law enforcement officers advanced into the demonstrators with batons. as a police car burned, the groups moved toward the entrance of cnn's atlanta headquarters, smashing windows and throwing projectiles at a line of police ofcers inside the building's lobby. in response to friday's unrest, georgia governor brian kemp declared a state of emergency and activated nea

and philip rucker white house bureau chief for "the washington post." let's begin tonight.he president and the states. one snapshot inichigan where democratic governor gretchen criticism for extending her restrictionsntil may 28th. and president trump said "she should give a litle." in maryland larry hogan told me in a "washington post" live t interview orsday that he fierce the federal government could try to seize the 500,000 coronavirus tests his sta secured from south korea. treasure when they landed at b.w.i. airport. >> it was like fort knocks to us because it was going to save thousands of lives. maryland sti protecting those tests? >> they are. the unanimous guard and the state police are bothuarding them at an undisclosed locatio robert: amid the reopening plans and the protests and the alarm about testing, federal officials have warned governors to not go too far, too fast. >> they know their states. the mayors know their cities mingts you want to give them a wiggle room. but my rommendation is don't wiggle too much. robert: dr. fauci said don't wiggle too much. w

>> our look at recent books on president trump continues with "washington post" paralytic and philip rucker whose book "a very stable genius" was released in january. at the commonwealth club in san francisco the taxahaw president trump argued for the firing of james comey and the turnover rate of white house staffers. >> we really careful in how we wrote about different sources, how people reacted in the room just because we understand how somebody reacted and the stink about the way the president was bowling them or mistreating them doesn't mean there were necessarily director sources for this book. we talked a lot of people were briefed about things at the time who were familiar with the some of the principles fought. cheryl and i wanted most important things we did in reporting this book was protected people were talking to us. they took a great risk to tell us what really happened behind the scenes, to tell us what is the president said to show us how it was so much worse than when you in real time. they did so because they trusted us that we would protect them. we tried to do that wit

. >> joining me now, philip rucker from "the washington post" and political analyst. let's get into this. there is a lot to discuss. but before i get reaction, i want to quickly add that this article for this article you and your colleagues wrote it was based on 82 interviews with administration officials with outside advisers and experts who have detailed knowledge of the white house dealing with the pandemic. so as i set up that, when you listen to larry ckudlow, what i your reaction to his comments? >> well, alex, let me just tell you the facts that as we know them based on our extensive reporting and a whole team of us. president trump was looking for better data to help justify his decision to reopen the economy. and kevin hassett, an economist in the administration whose been working on helping with the pandemic response put together his own data analysis that was really intended to guide decision making for things like ventilators but it was determined in the west wing to project a much lower death count than the other models were showing, than the publicly ava