i would love for cornyn to make it hard for me to run against him. so we'll take kicking his ass in november. >> i knew lloyd benson, and i could tell you that texas would be at least as well represented by you as they were by benson in the united states senate. m.j. hegar, really appreciate it. >> thanks for having me, lawrence. thanks. >> thank you. >> "the 11th hour with brian williams" starts now. good evening once again. day 1,280 of the trump administration, 104 days until our next presidential election. on this day when the president assured the nation it's all going to work out. it is working out. there is news with another case of coronavirus within the white house complex. an email went out to white house

staff confirming a cafeteria worker has tested positive, and contact tracing is under way. the cafeteria is at the executive office building which houses a number of white house aides including senior staff, the vice president's official office, national security council and the like. the cafeteria is run by a contractor, and it's now closed down. another different commissary in a different building was also shut down. the white house has told staffers there's no reason for panic or alarm. you will recall the vice president's press secretary and trump's personal valet have tested positive for the virus thus far. last month, it was reported several secret service agents and campaign advance staff assigned to the president's tulsa rally were also positive. tonight, trump spoke to fox news about the virus, and how it was

unlike anything he's known. >> when people like to compare it to the flu. i see the flu numbers, they're very bad. but when i look at flu numbers, i never lost somebody to the flu. over my life, i've heard many people had the flu. how are you doing? i have the flu. nobody died. i never remember anybody saying, he had the flu, he died. i've lost five people, probably six, actually, as of this moment, i think, pretty soon. >> a reminder, early on, the president was calling this the flu. late this afternoon, the president held the second of his newly revived white house coronavirus briefings. absent any experts or members of the task force. he appeared to suggest the country is getting a handle on cases, and the protests against police brutality were part of the surge. >> we continue to vigorously

combat the rise of cases in the south and southwest and the west. we're closely monitoring and aggressively acting to control the infection in texas, arizona, california, florida. arizona is starting to come down. cases started to rise among young americans shortly after demonstrations, which you know very well about. which presumably triggered a relaxation of mitigation efforts nationwide. i think you want to travel with them, there are instances where you can use it. >> would you encourage federal properties to follow the order? >> we're going to make a decision over the next 24 hours. we'll let you know what that decision is. i just spoke to dr. fauci, dr. birx is just outside. they're giving me everything they know. it seems to be working out very well. >> earlier today, dr. fauci gave

a more sober assessment of things. saying he didn't think we would ever eradicate the disease. the u.s. has now lost well over 143,000 souls. just shy of 4 million confirmed cases now. california today passed new york to become the state with the highest number of infections. meanwhile, under the heading better late than never, three midwestern governors, ohio, indiana, minnesota, have now all signed orders mandating masks. the president again advocated masks tonight, and said, more and more people are saying wash your hands. he said we've done some amazing things when you compare our stats to other countries. evidence to the contrary. he also said cases came up in sections of our country that we didn't anticipate, like florida and texas. again, evidence to the contrary. and he is escalating his use of

federal law enforcement in our cities. just as he's done in portland, oregon, where protesters have been clashing with federal agent, the militarized kind. he soberly announced a surge of hundreds of the same federal officers into chicago and other cities to combat violent crime. >> in recent weeks, there has been a radical movement to defund, dismantle, and dissolve our police departments, extreme politicians have joined this anti-police crusade. the effort to shut down policing in their own communities has led to a shocking explosion of shootings, killings, murders, and heinous crimes and violence. this bloodshed must end. >> we had the terrible event in minneapolis. but then we had this extreme

reaction that has demonized police and called for the defunding of police departments. this rise is a direct result of the attack on the police forces. >> that terrible event the attorney general referred to, the death of george floyd beneath the knee of a police officer. trump recently stepped up his attacks on chicago's mayor, laurie lightfoot. berating her and other democratic mayors, extreme and radical left democrats, he called them. for failing to quell the violence in their cities. and this photo which led people to say, if you can find an attorney general to look at you, to wink at you, the way bill barr looks and winks at donald trump, hire him. here to talk about this, our

panel. good evening, and welcome to you all. peter, i'd like to begin with you and your beat first. another coronavirus case in the white house. another briefing absent experts. the president says they're more concise this way. in the meantime, as the virus continues to surge, he's surging militarized feds to chicago after they tear-gassed a group of moms in portland who had formed a human line to protect the protesters. have i correctly described this week in july in the summer of 2020? >> yeah, you have. and of course it's a very unsettled time. it's a time when it feels like anything can happen, is

happening, and it's hard to get a grasp on it. and you have a president who for weeks had denied that there was anything serious going on with the virus. basically put it in the rear view, and now tacitly and somewhat overtly is admitting it's not over. it's a serious problem, as much as he wants to use positive language. he has described himself as a cheerleader, the fact that he's resumed the briefings is a nod to the fact that there's a huge number of cases going on right now. and the deaths that had gone down are now going back up. and it's troubling for the country, it's troubling for him, because of course he had hoped to get everybody back to work by now. get schools going by the fall. that doesn't seem to be likely. schools are going the opposite direction, even though that wanted to have some sort of in-person classes are going back to online. businesses are shutting down.

more than 15,000 restaurants in the country have decided to shut down for good. they're not coming back. this is a very unsettled moment for this white house. and you see a president struggling to get ahold of it. >> alexi, this president with coming up on 100 days to go is prevented because of a pandemic from really campaigning for office. the "washington post" said the briefings are being revived to bolster his campaign. do you think or do you know that elected republicans are okay with this? >> well, what we know to be true is that the president's numbers and support significantly declined in poll after poll after he started doing these daily coronavirus briefings. and that's not just with 65-plus americans, both men and women, who of course are disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus. we've seen polling that shows

that republicans, 2016 trump voters, and independent voters are slowly but surely moving away from the president. and they're moving to joe biden's campaign. that's a really significant movement that we've seen. and even the trump campaign privately admits that their internal polling is not looking good as of late. and president trump is someone who doesn't like when the limelight is away from him for too long. he wants to be the main messenger for something like this, but we do those monthly focus groups with voters, and they have family members that are dying from coronavirus. friends and colleagues who are dyi dying from coronavirus, and they want to hear the facts, even if it doesn't feel good. they want a leader that says i'm here with you throughout this

crisis. they don't hear that from president trump. and what remains to be seen is whether that's enough to significantly change things away from him come november. >> john, the president said today this is worse than the flu. would have been true if he said it back on april 1st. he said a lot of people are talking about hand washing now, as they were on april 1st. he's advocating masks, ditto. what have we been doing for these last six months, only to hear these warnings from this president at these briefings now? >> well, i'll try to answer your question literally. i think what we've been doing in a way that the country doesn't do all that often is paying very close attention to the words and deeds of this president. i think that part of the problem is, a large part of the problem for donald trump is that the things he's saying today and the things he said yesterday are

things that might have been the beginning of a plausible attempt to lead through this crisis had they been the way that he started. instead, the people who have paid attention to him, the country, who watched him in the early rounds of the coronavirus briefings, in all of the instances in which he said things that he's contradicting, when he turned mask wearing into a culture war or id oeological r in this country, now he's trying to undo some of the damage. focusing on the politics, the things that alexi said are all true, and the campaign is aware of the direness of the president's situation. i hope we're going to talk about the movement around chicago and portland. but the sense that everything

now is a reaction, and i think they recognize that the stain left on donald trump's credibility and the political damage that he inflicted on himself over the last four to five months will not be undone by a couple of reversals of course, and by a couple of semi-sane briefing room appearances. >> peter, he is not unaccustomed to trying a bank shot. this new persona may just be one, however. he's trying to be the approachable public health expert and cheerleader at these briefin briefings while in the other part of his day, mr. law and order. mr. they're coming for you in the suburbs, and i'm surging camouflaged federal troops to your streets. >> yeah, it's been a rather striking week for him. federal forces in the streets of portland over the objections of

the mayor and governor. he's now talking about sending federal agents to chicago against the objections of the mayor of chicago. he's casting the cities basically as, you know, the enemy. run by liberal democrats. he's always sure to tell people they're run by liberal democrats, and he ties it to his opponent, joe biden. he's not being subtle about it, he's drawing the political argument here. it's not just an issue of crime or rioting or unrest by protesters. he's making a direction connection to the election by saying if you elect joe biden, america will not be safe. it's a stark, dark message. but it's in keeping with the very beginning of his president say, when he told us about american carnage. he promised it would be over by now, but he's looking for a foil and the american cities run by

democrats are the ones he's chosen to focus on. that's not to say there aren't problems in these cities. there are. some of the cities have had some pretty horrific violence and cases of crime. but the president, rather than working together, is finding ways to confront the mayors and governors to make this a confrontation. that's the way he understands politics and governance. >> alexi, i want to show you something that gave a lot of democrats the vapors, made them very wistful. we'll talk about it on the other side. >> can you imagine standing up when you were a president saying it's not my responsibility? i take no responsibility? i mean, literally. >> those words didn't come out of our mouths when we were in office. >> i don't understand his inability to get a sense of what people are going through.

he just can't relate in any way. >> so he served as part of obama/biden. he's apparently going to run as part of biden/obama. alexi, other than reminding people of, oh, i don't know, a past presidency, what did you find notable about that tease video from a longer segment being released? >> of course, the fact that they met in person. that means that joe biden has been in d.c. recently, which is interesting. but that's a separate conversation. i think what is interesting about this video with obama and biden, of course, is that we're going to be seeing a lot more of obama in the next couple of months until the november election. but to your point just now, what is interesting is we hear a lot from biden lately, virtually and in person with remarks, releasing policy about how he would be a different type of leader than president trump. we're mostly hearing that from

biden. what is interesting is that obama is now coming into the fold to help pitch biden to voters by hinging on the experience that biden has and the experience they had together leading through different national crises at this time, not just the coronavirus, but other things like police brutality and systemic racism and other crises that the country will face. that's really important, not just because people are looking for a contrast to trump, who has the motto i alone can fix it. they want to know that biden will have smart people around him to help. and he will make the case, not just biden is saying this is my experience, this is what i've done. and some people believe that. but to convince people who are not sure of biden's experience, or maybe are susceptible to the criticism by president trump, biden is old, we don't know if

he will be able to lead. someone like obama can come in and give reinforcement to biden and say, this is what we've done, this is who i know him to be as a person. it's a lot more powerful coming from people around biden than just having be the sole messenger. and that's interesting to watch. >> john, i want to air something here that aired on fox news tonight. another part of the interview the president granted to the fox news on air physician. we have something to say about this afterwards. but here's where the president retold the story of the test he took that measures cognitive decline. >> like a memory question, it's like you'll go person, woman, man, camera, tv. ten minutes, 15, 20 minutes later, they say, remember the first question, not the first,

but the tenth question? give us that again. can you do that again? you go person, woman, man, camera, tv. they say, that's amazing. how did you do that? i have, like, a good memory, because i'm cognitively there. >> john, a couple of points here. on social media, t-shirts are already for sale. it's launch 1,000 memes. for all of us who have lived with adults in our lives, our loved ones, with dementia, i was there in the hospital when my late father had this test administered, this feels close and familiar. it's familiar to a lot of us as a standardized test for cognitive decline. a serious question. is the president somehow conflating or confusing this

with a marker of a more academic achievement or an iq test? >> yeah, brian, i think that's exactly what he's doing. when he ends by saying i'm cognitively there, my question is, cognitively where? because i do think this is the thing that comes through as he talks about it over and over again. he does seem to think it's an iq test, not one that is giving to people to ask the question, have they started to slip into dementia? are they showing signs of alzheimer's? if the president did take this, and doesn't have any signs of dementia or alzheimer's, that's good to know. but the president's pride in this is something that is good to see, like the parent who has a kid who just took the gifted

test and came back with a score that suggests they should skip a grade. and that's wholly misplaced, because that's not what this test is about. and i think it would do the president well if he were to cease talking about this topic in order to at least spare himself some of the brutal mockery he's in for right now. >> to our guests, our big three on a wednesday night, thanks as always for having us in during a pandemic. peter, alexi, and john. indeed for those scoring at home, the gas-fed fireplace and soaring ceiling beats the bookshelf and the kitchen sunflowers for the win. coming up after the win, if it feels like your city is missing out on secret police in the streets, give it some time. especially if your mayor is a democrat, they may be coming

soon to a street near you. and later, the last time we had this miami doctor on our broadcast, she said the situation in florida was like a third-world country. we'll ask how things stand tonight, as "the 11th hour" is just getting under way on a wednesday. wednesday. because we're in-network with even more major insurance plans. so, if you've been turned down before, call us now. with even more mawhether it's bribes. ...or an overdue makeover. get all your pet essentials right when you need them, with curbside pickup at petsmart. just order online, drive up, check-in, and pick up.

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when you look at chicago and you look at the job mayor lightfoot sent me a letter yesterday, i think in their own way, they want us to go in. right now, we're sending extra people to help. we're arresting a lot of people that have been very bad. >> so the chicago mayor, lori lightfoot, had this response to the president's so-called surge of federal troopers to the streets of her city. >> the president is trying to d divert attention from his failed

leadership on covid-19. if he really wanted to help us, there are some things that the federal government is uniquely qualified to do. why are we engaged in such violence? because there are too many damn guns on our streets. >> here to talk about it, maya wiley, and steve schmidt. he was among the founders of the lincoln project, dedicated to the defeat of trump and trumpism. steve, because of your quotes on this topic, i'm going to begin with you. overseas if we saw these pictures, we could call it a

military junta. but you've called these men and women jackbooted thugs, stormtroopers. is this the caravan of this election cycle, coupled with the law and order message, coupled with meadows, pence, and trump all saying some version of, here will be your country under biden. you are not safe. you're not going to be safe in the suburbs. does that justify camouflaged, some unit badging, camouflaged militarized federal troops? >> brian, good evening. the president of the united states is a constitutional vandal and a political arsonist. his campaign is failing. he's on track to lose to vice president biden. and he has loosed violence in

american cities at an epic level. what we're seeing is illiberal, illegal, and dangerous. when you see those men, it's hard to believe we're looking at scenes from the united states of america in 2020. this is all very real. the caravan was pretend. it was made up, it was a fiction deployed on fox news and on right-wing state trump media, whatever you want to call it. but it was imaginary. this is very real. the violence and broken bones are real. the injuries are real. and i think it's important that when donald trump loses this election, one of the things that president biden should do immediately is we should never, ever see again in this country federal offices of any type

wearing camouflage uniforms like that. this militarized presence is not something you see in a healthy democracy. at the end, when you see assaults being made on federal buildings and on a federal courthouse, vandalism, it would be totally appropriate for federal offices to be deployed in a perimeter around the building to secure federal property. but they're there looking for a fight, looking for a brawl. these men as has been reported have no training for the mission. this is thuggery, it's federal thuggery. and it's frightening. ronald reagan said that freedom is only one generation away ever from being extinguished. and this should scare the hell out of every american. when secretary ridge has decried

that, we should listen to that seriously. we have a former hill staffer and lobbyist who is an acting secretary who is unconfirmable who is in charge of this out of control federal agency. i think going back to its creation after the 9/11 attacks, the name was always inappropriate, but the homeland security department needs to be broken up and reorganized. it has turned into something monstrous. what donald trump is doing here is an outrage against american liberty and an assault on our constitutional values. and that these men are armed like that, facing off against americans exercising their first amendment rights, the overreach, the violence, it's out of control and no american should

stand for this. >> maya, i suppose i should have asked alexi what it must feel like to see these feds having tear gassed a line of moms in portland, oregon, who put themselves between the feds and the protesters. to know they're now headed for chicago. maya, at the same time, let's be real and talk about what is a brutal, deadly summer in chicago. and how you go about that if you're the mayor of chicago and you don't want these feds there. >> yeah. look, mayor lightfoot has a tough job because there's no question that folks in communities, in any community, including the black community, want to feel safe. and the problem in black communities is that we don't feel safe with police.

when we need police, we wonder if we can call them. that's something that donald trump is playing on for exactly what steve is talking about in terms of the threat to democracy, freedoms, and safety. but let's step back and realize what stereotypes trump is manipula manipulating. chicago has had declining rates of murder. declining. what has happened is the humanitarian crisis. very few people are responsible for shootings and murders. the mayor is right about guns. but protesters demand we invest in solutions that don't make us less safe. we know and data shows us when we take folks from the community, often folks that themselves may have been in

prison for violent crime, and train them to be violence interrupters, before there's a need to call in authorities, we've seen a dramatic 40% to 75% drop in shootings in a community, because we have people from the community trained to intervene in violence. that's a national model. we have it in new york city, in chicago, in cities across the country. but we have never sufficiently invested in it. if donald trump were interested in solutions, he would not be supporting any silly discussions in the senate controlled by republicans that is talking about giving people $100 a week, which won't even pay the rent, let alone buy them enough food in a humanitarian crisis, in a crisis that is part of what is destabilizing our communities. making sure that people could support themselves, and make

sure the tried and true methods of reducing violence are getting sufficient resources and investment. >> our guests are staying with us. we'll squeeze in a break. coming up, the politics behind the president's efforts to reframe his coronavirus response with over 140,000 of our fellow citizens dead.

the president has now decided to go it alone when it comes to white house briefings and messaging on this pandemic. with over 140,000 of our fellow citizens dead. maya, i was thinking of your circumstance earlier tonight. a young lawyer working for the southern district of new york, ivy league educated. when you got a federal paycheck, it was for what you brought to the job, for your expertise. what do you make of the lack of expertise flanking this president as he sets out national policy and talks to people about this pandemic, not for the lack of expertise in our federal government? >> yeah, donald trump has demonstrated he's a president without a plan. with an out of control pandemic.

and no pleas, no thank yous for his telling us we should wear masks and wash hands. which we've known for months. which he's undermined for months, and he's ignoring his own experts, people like dr. fauci, who are nonpartisan, just demonstrates the point. he's failed to lead in a time of crisis. and he can't cover that up by pretending now that he embraces masks. >> steve, can you imagine being a republican officeholder running down-ballot from this president, perhaps in a place where the polls are on the move and you're looking at a ticket maybe being under water. they have about 100 days. do you expect many more republican heads to surface at the terrible risk of getting

tweeted at by the president? >> it's too late. all the republicans have lashed themselves to the mast of the sinking ss donald trump. he's the biggest failure in american presidential history. his noxious qualities, buffoonery, stupidity, ignorance, have combined into a lethal and deadly mix. and by the end, we'll have hundreds of thousands dead in america, and it didn't have to be. we didn't have to be the epicenter of coronavirus death and suffering, with a shattered economy. but that's what happens when you elect a reality show star with no business having any political power to the post powerful office in the land. we have to endure the unendurable because of the fool who serves as the 45th president of the united states.

>> if you want to have a smart conversation, invite smart people. and we did tonight. maya and steve, both friends of this broadcast, thank you for spending time with us and having us in. coming up, florida's governor says kids and teachers are chomping at the bit to come back to the classroom. we'll ask a doctor there if that's a good idea right about now. about now. they're going to be paying for this for a long time. they will, but with accident forgiveness allstate won't raise your rates just because of an accident, even if it's your fault. cut! sonny. was that good? line! the desert never lies. isn't that what i said? no you were talking about allstate and insurance. i just... when i... let's try again. everybody back to one. accident forgiveness from allstate. click or call for a quote today. accident forgiveness from allstate. when you think of a bank, you think of people in a place. but when you have the chase mobile app, your bank can be virtually any place. so, when you get a check... you can deposit it from here. and you can see your transactions

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desantis is pushing to reopen those schools. today he said parents and teachers should be given the option to return to the classroom. adding this. >> i know many teachers and faculty are chomping at the bit to get back to the classroom. they know how much their students depend on their instruction and on their tutelage. we support you and want you to be safe. >> intensely personal decision for all of the parents involved. and we should point out, the top teachers' union in florida has sued desantis for what they call his reckless and unsafe reopening of those schools. here to talk about all of it, dr. aileen mardi. a 25-year navy officer, and has worked with the world health organization among others.

the governor says we're on the right course. you tell us, are you? >> let's put this whole thing in perspective. as you said, miami-dade has 92,000-odd cases. miami-dade has that many cases all by itself. that's more than 7,000-odd cases than all of china. all of china. and just today, we admitted 191 additional patients with covid to our hospital. when the w.h.o. declared this an international public health emergency on january 30th, there were only 82 cases outside of china. and that's the moment that this country and every other country was put on alert that we had to act. and we had to put into effect the testing, the tracing, and everything else that needed to

happen. on the 30th of january. and mind you, people forget, they keep talking about march, when there was a common theory about using the name pandemic. forget about it. that's not the role of the w.h.o. the role of the w.h.o. is to call it of international concern, and that's what they did on the 30th of january. >> he said at one point, they don't transmit easily. some don't transmit at all. and he said some don't bring it home with them. this is timely, as i said, the most intensely personal decision for so many families. a real gut call for school districts. where do you come down on this, given family and community spread? >> well, let's start with the

reality of where and when studies have been done on children. so studies on children, when we check whether they get contaminated by the virus, and then whether or not they have a high enough viral load to share with other people, unequivocally show they have the same viral load, especially children above the age of 10, as any adult would. therefore they can absolutely acquire the virus and share the virus whether or not they have symptoms. thank goodness only a small percentage of children end up hospitalized. but that's separate from being able to spread the disease. children are absolutely part of this pandemic. children do soccer, we have hospitalized children in miami-dade, for example, and children have died in south florida because of covid-19. this is an extremely serious

circumstance, and moreover, we've looked very carefully at what our parents want for the schools. i work with a phenomenal superintendent, mr. carvallo, who will not be opening schools unless miami-dade meets the criteria we've established for reopening. >> doctor, thank you for coming on. sorry to keep you up late. please come back. i appreciate it very much. coming up, two very close neighbors with very different ways of living and it turns out dying. we'll explain this photo when we come back. no matter what challenges life throws at you, we're always here to help with fast response and great service and it doesn't stop there we're also here to help look ahead that's why we're helping members catch up by spreading any missed

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to help fulfill the command to love our neighbors as ourselves. this opportunity only comes once every 10 years. everybody who is in your house should be counted in the census. our parents, your in-laws, that cousin who's living with you. each of us is worthy and must be counted. it is more important than ever that every voice is heard. make sure you are counted. shape your future. start here. at 20202census.gov. tonight those two vessels in

one photograph offer us a tale of two nations. in the foreground, a canada tour boat at niagara falls. in the background, if you guess those are american tourists, you would be correct. one picture illustrates the difference between our earnest and sensible neighbors to the north. and their noisy downstairs neighbors in yolo u.s. no distancing. no problem. we're on a boat. a comparison of the curve vs. the canada curve. tells the story. that is them at the bottom. and while our population is vastly higher, we both have governments that we trust will keep us safe. hoover ran for president on the promise of a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage. our current president promised a ventilator for everyone who needs one. we have that going for us. another break when we come back a man who helped to preserve the

american story as he saw it.

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last thing before we go tonight is farewell to the great photographer. he left us with images to travels like chernobyl. to his work with on the migrant workers. to the early aids crisis in san

francisco. he shot for magnum photos and look magazine. now long gone, it was once on the coffee tables of millions of american families. along with its sister life and time. one day in his life one sad day in our nations history that left us all the indelible images of who we are during an awful time. right after the assassination of new york senator robert f. kennedy brother of the assassinated president. the funeral train departed new york for washington. carrying his body and eventually arlington national cemetery. his editor assigned him to get on the train. paul later said he wasn't thinking so much about the journey but planning for the things like camera angles. and then something happened. ordinary citizens showed up along the tracks to pay

respects. they were just people. sad for their nation. sad for the kennedy family. sad because of what had just been taken from us. in train stations, on rail sidings. some on hillside. backyard. a spontaneous explosion of mourning over hundreds of miles of train track. it was an eight hour journey. he saw thm all. and in the all manual analog world of photographers in 1968 leaning out an open window. focussed on the fly. the result was sweeping and intimate. and moving. and sinmatic. they were all but lost to history until years ago when a search of the library of congress turned up everything he shot that day. 1,800 slides. he later said the sense of motion in some of the photographs the blur of the

country side emphasized the emotional break up of the society. not everyone gets to leave a national treasure behind. at the time of their passing. paul was able to do that. he is gone now at age 89. that is our broadcast on this wednesday evening. with our thanks for being here with us on behalf of my che colleagues at the net work. good night. one of the remarkably consistent features of this country is absolutely catastrophic coronavirus pandemic is whatever the president might be saying on any given day, that the virus will just disappear, or keeping businesses closed, the owner operating safely, is worse than tens of thousands of more americans dyeing or the nation's schools should definitely all reopen in the fall and he will pull their funding if they don't